12: And now for something completely different

... Grumpy Old Geeks. Two old farts, a microphone, and the internet. What could go wrong?

So here we are again. We were trying to wait for the sirens of Venice to go away, but apparently they're just going to be around today, and there's not much we can do about it. Yeah, it's not going away. There's too much crime in your neighborhood. It's like a bad hood. Well, yeah, I do. So we're changing shit up, big time.

Okay, yeah. Jason, tell me everything that's going on with our podcast, because I don't know. So one of the things when we started with Squarespace was I found that the stats sucked. Then we had that great bit of customer service from Squarespace where they let us change our podcast URL, which is going to come in handy now, because we are changing hosting yet again and leaving Squarespace, sadly.

Right. We just don't get enough traffic stats, which is a big problem. And I thought you said this new printer was great, and it just won't shut up. It has a mind of its own right now. Okay. Number five is alive. Seriously. See, it's still trying to print out. Whatever. Oh, never mind. Pull the plug.

Kill it. It's like a switch on the back of the neck of data. Sorry, everyone. Oh, my God. It hates you. It hates us. Okay. So. Did I get into my printer while I was on this podcast? That was your rant last week. Okay. There you go. Remember your customer support problems?

Very quick. Okay. Stats. So Squarespace doesn't have very good stats. Zero stats on downloads. Zero stats. Only stats you get are on who or how many people have viewed your RSS feed. Right. And since pod snarfers grab your RSS feed multiple times a day, you don't get uniques on it.

It's a pain. It's basically useless to find out actually how many people are listening to us. Right. So we switched to FeedBurner. FeedBurner stats are per day or an average across time, and it doesn't give you uniques. So I don't know. It's mind-bogglingly complex and, again, useless.

Yes. If you've got a blog, it's a little easier, but still, FeedBurner stats, blow too. Okay. So we're moving everything. We're leaving Squarespace for the blog, moving that to WordPress. Okay. Which you know how much I love WordPress. We both love it so much. I'm coming to terms again with WordPress because it's what I have to do now.

I'm starting up a bunch of blogs and doing all this other stuff. And so we're going to go there. It gives us more freedom, more flexibility to do what we want to do. Okay. So we're also moving to LibSyn. And what is that? A liberated syndication network, I believe, is what it is.

I just noticed LibSyn. Okay. For all the episode hosting for the files because we get download stats on the actual files. Oh, see, that's actually useful. That's what I'm saying. So we can get back. You can see how many people are looking at the older episodes or whatnot because, you know, for a while we didn't know if we're going to keep doing this.

But this is just too much fun, so we should at least have some stats, you know. I don't know if we're ever going to make a dime on it, but I don't care. I just want to do it for fun, and I want to know what tools are out there. And they're the, you know, the 800-pound gorilla as far as podcast hosting goes. Everybody uses them. Perfect.

It's either them or put it on S3 and snarf the logs, and I don't feel like writing a log parser to do this kind of thing. I'd rather pay. We're paying like $40 a month. Right. So it's a little pricey. Okay. I think we can tweak it in the future. I just want to, you know, for transparency.

Yes. Just to let people know how much money we spend on this a month, which is quite a bit. Right. And because we had to import all the old episodes, and we were running at almost 700 meg on the old episodes. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we've done quite a few now. This is number 12, I believe. Number 12. Yeah.

Yeah. And like I was mentioning the other time, bandwidth isn't free, even though everybody seems to think it is. It's not. Well, yeah. I'm fine with paying for bandwidth. Yeah. And, you know, S3 was actually a pretty good option as far as cheap bandwidth goes. But from a stats perspective, I want to know what we're doing right, what we're doing wrong.

Because people don't tend to comment that much. Yeah. Because people are inherently lazy. Well, no. I don't think we just have a very big audience yet. We're still, we're just doing this for fun. So that's coming down the pipe. But I wanted to bring this up on the show because when we do the switch, and I apologize in advance, iTunes may download those old shows automatically for you, or whatever pod snarfer you're on, Downcast or Instacast or whatever.

Right. You know, whatever's out there. So I apologize in advance if it tries to download them for you again. And what can I say? We just, we got to make some changes. It happens. Even on my iTunes, when we did that first switch a while back, I have two different Grumpy Old Geeks podcast things where they're split up one through five and six through eleven.

Basically, you just delete them both and you re-download them if you're really anal like me and you want things nice and organized and put in one place. Yeah, and that was my fault because I didn't realize where iTunes was doing the show title and the author and all that stuff.

So I screwed up and put our names in one time. So we created a whole new podcast. We lost everything. And then I flipped it back in a panic and it all came back. But it's kind of a black art, this podcasting thing. There's not a lot of documentation out there. No, it's, yeah, it's kind of amorphous as far as how this goes.

But that's okay. We don't mind that. No, and it kind of sucks that we're just beholden to iTunes that there aren't any great, great podcast directories out there. There are a bunch of like smaller ones and a few medium-sized ones. But, you know, iTunes is the go-to guys. It's the big place to go.

Yeah, so we're going to keep going with that. And also you will notice a new format. Everything's changing with that. But you're going to have to keep listening to the show to figure out what's going on with that. Yeah, we're changing this shit up. Amen, brother. All right. Comment of the Week. We got a new segment, Comment of the Week.

Comment of the Week. Boom, boom, boom. So our first comment of the week is from Beach Mama. And she writes, Loving the podcast. I don't understand half of what you and Brian are talking about, but I figure if I pick up at least a couple tips, I'm happy. I don't mind the language so much, but not the booze promos.

As a 58-year-old woman, I'm guessing that I'm probably not your target market. I would love to promote the podcast, but with so many people struggling with alcoholism, I hate to see drinking glorified in any way. I truly enjoyed the podcast, number eight, where you came clean with your past.

I was touched, moved, and inspired. Thanks so much for all of the time and effort you and Brian put into the GOG podcast. No, Beach Mama. Thank you. Honestly, thank you very much for your feedback. Yeah, thanks very much, Beach Mama. As I'm the beach grumpy old geek guy living in Venice, I like the Beach Mama aspect of it.

A couple things. I'm not entirely sure that we even have a target market since everybody is into tech now, including 58-year-old women. Yeah, you're totally our target market. Anybody who enjoys the show is our target market. We're our target market, so it's all good. Regarding the promotion of booze and whatnot, well, we like booze.

We like to drink. We're doing this for free. We're doing it for fun. And also, I mean, it's not a Pollyanna world. What are we supposed to do? Pretend that these things don't exist? Was Pulp Fiction not supposed to be made because some people have problems with heroin? Not that this is Pulp Fiction or art by any means, but, you know, we drink.

We like to drink. And drink. A lot of coders drink. And I think it would be inauthentic if we didn't talk about it, at least. Yeah, because we do it. And honestly, I started listening to another podcast recently, which is a bunch of PHP coders.

They drink way more than we do, and they promote it way more than we do. We just have a couple beers and hang out. Yeah, and we've just been saying beers that we like that we're actually drinking at the time. Again, we're on the Michelobeltro for a second time right now, so I wouldn't say we like this. But it's tasty. It goes down smooth, and we're not slurring by the end of it.

I get what you're saying. I totally understand it. But, you know, it's part of what we do. It's part of the world. There are tons of wine podcasts out there and beer podcasts, and we're just expressing another thing that we love beyond our code and sci-fi geekiness. We love beer. And honestly, I mean, as someone who actually, me personally, has struggled with alcoholism in the past, came to terms with it, and found a happy medium where I can enjoy a beer and not let it ruin my life.

Thank you, Michelobeltro. Yes, thank you, Michelobeltro. And again, I think we've also talked a lot about the healthy things that we do. So, you know, life is a yin and yang, man. Totally. Beach Mama, you should get this. Yeah, chill, baby. It's a yin and yang. A little beer, a little exercise.

It's all groovy. But thanks again, Beach Mama, for your comment. And if you want to be on the next segment of Comment of the Week, drop us a line. In the news. This week, a Florida woman came forward and won the gigantic lottery down in wherever, how many states they have.

I don't know how the lottery works anymore. No, I don't either. This 84-year-old woman came forward, I got the ticket, single woman, and took the immediate payout instead of going the long-term 20-year payout. Well, she's 84. She's 84. So, you know what?

For her, props. Yeah. And she got, like, financial advisors and all that shit. That's not the story with her, though. Everybody wins a lottery every week. Who gives a shit? The big story with this woman is these nice people in front of her let her cut line and get her quick pick.

Worst case of good Samaritanism ever? Ever. Ever. So, hopefully, I mean, for their sake, I hope they don't remember doing that. And she was just some anonymous lady who came in and out short-term memory, didn't stick. Done. Hopefully. Yeah.

Although, to be fair, if I were that old lady, I would reach out and say, whoever you were, have a million dollars. No shit. I mean, that's the nice thing to do. But look at her. She looks angry. She does not look like a pleasant woman. So, I'm thinking she's probably not going to do that.

I mean, and so she took, it was $590.5 million. Wow. And to take the payout, she got $370.9. So, she lost $220 million. Oh, that's fine. That's a lot of interest. So, if you figure, they keep the money and then they pay it out.

So, they're making money on the interest to pay for the whole thing. Yes. So, they got a $370 million chunk. Yeah. Because that part's all, you know, just math and a scam. But at least she was smart about getting a financial advisor and all that stuff beforehand. Because everybody that wins the lottery is back in the same boat they were in, if not worse, a year or two later.

It seems to be. I mean, but that's always kind of been the joke, right? The lottery is stupid tax. And they're not the smartest people in the world that end up winning it. Because if you're smart, you don't play the lottery. Well, that's what our previous guest, Joey, had the best joke ever. What has six balls and screws poor people?

The lottery. Exactly. So, but yeah, this story is a little insane and it just kind of goes to show you that being nice doesn't pay. No shit. So, this is my next story here is a couple who hosted a self-help radio show found dead in joint suicide in Brooklyn home.

Can you say schadenfreude? Well, I'm just wondering if they were the people that were in line in front of her. Ooh, very clever. So, you know, this is, this was a woman who was 46 and her husband who was 48. Right. They actually had a radio show on WBAI in New York, which is the same radio network that does the 2600 show off the hook.

Okay. So, I know the radio station. Right. But it's like, it makes me wonder about this whole self-help thing and people out there doing this kind of thing. Are they not the most miserable people in the world? Like comedians who make you laugh are some of the most damaged people you've ever been. Homaged angry people because a lot of that humor comes from anger.

I'm, the self-help industry has always kind of vaguely sickened me. I mean, I'm sure there's some wonderful people out there and I don't want to cast dispersions on, on these people. And it's sad that they killed themselves and they were in so much pain. Yet, we're still laughing about it because it's ironic, but.

It's ironic. I'm not really laughing about it. I kind of was when I read the headline. How can you not? Yeah, I don't know. It makes you a horrible person, but it's fucking funny. Man. No, it's, it's a horrible thing. And, and yeah, I, I mean, a lot of them are, what drove them to that? Was it, was it their career? Was it other things?

Did they feel bad about the fact that they were giving people advice and things didn't go well? I mean, you hear like both and I, you and I listen to Dr. Drew's podcast a lot. We hear about his angst with things, um, when, when things don't work and how much it affects him and personally and how depressed he gets over things. And, um, when you take on other people's suffering as your business and career, it's bound to affect you.

I, I'd assume. Yeah. Splash damage. Exactly. Cause I, I just watched the show, the new show, I think it was on Bravo called LA shrinks. And these people, these people are twice as messed up as yes, I do watch reality TV. So, but anyway, my wife can sit and watch Bravo together later tonight.

If that would make you feel better. No, it wouldn't. But these people were just as messed up, if not more messed up than the people they were treating, you know? And I had a friend who had two psychologists, his parents, he was messed up. They were more messed up. I, um, I was a psychology double major in high school and, uh, I, the joke, high school or high school, sorry, in college.

Um, and the joke was always, you know, everybody here is here because they're fucked up. Yeah. Yeah. They're trying to figure out themselves, not get a degree. So, uh, there's something to that. Definitely. What I just really hope is that the people that they helped, that they actually helped on their radio show, don't see this as some kind of trigger for them to relapse.

That's when I think, when I see things like this, that's what I worry about, you know? Right. When the healers can't heal themselves and then the people that they actually did heal, you know? Yeah. But then there's always the argument that if you were really into healing people, why would you be doing a radio show? Why aren't you on private practice?

Is it more about your ego? Is it more about you being out there as opposed to just doing what you do? Well, the thing, she was a psychotherapist and her husband was a motivational speaker. So he had no actual credentials to speak of. Okay. Motivational speakers can all go fuck off and die. Yeah.

So I'm betting he talked her into doing the show. Probably. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. Okay. We're done with that one. A little twist. Okay. So more news stories. Let's get a little dark because this has been... Oh, that wasn't dark enough. Let's get even darker because this has been a bit of focus for me, not just even this week, although a lot of news stories seem to be coming out about it.

But for a while now as we've been watching this economy change and certainly because I've been working in the music industry and we've watched that get completely decimated and we're seeing more and more of that happen. Journalists everywhere not getting paid anymore. Everything's freelance and you're lucky to get paid anything.

Dollar on the blog post. Dollar on the blog post. So they're the Chicago Sun-Times. Yeah. They fired all their photographers. Yeah. No more photographers. All gone. And this really saddens me because when I was in photography school, one of my great teachers, one of my photojournalism teacher, who I ended up working for and assisting for for several years, she was a staff Sun-Times photographer and she was amazing.

And they just kicked him to the curb and said, oh, we're just going to give our journalists iPhones and they can take pictures and video. But here's the really thing, the thing that really tweaks me about the Sun-Times statement about this. They said that their audience is more involved with video now.

I'm like, you run a newspaper. It's a newspaper. How the fuck are you going to print a video in your newspaper? Yeah. And it goes to that whole thing that like everybody thinks that they can do everything now. You've got an iPhone, so therefore you're a videographer and you're a photographer and you're a writer and you can go ahead and do all the social network posts for all.

It's just on and on and quality is getting lost and everything is this horrible kind of good enough is what people are going. Yeah, they fired a Pulitzer Prize winning photographer who shot for them for years. One of the best photographers in the business. Right.

It's mind-boggling. And the funny thing is on the story we'll link to in the show notes, the Chicago Tribune, they covered it. Right. And they went to the Billy Goat Tavern, which is a famous tavern in Chicago, and interviewed the photographers that got fired and they shot video with a fucking iPhone.

So you can see their video, so I don't know. Maybe it's more endemic than we thought. Who knows? It's a crazy thing that's happening with every industry and we just see it more and more. I mean, photography was bound to go that way, but to be fair, so are newspapers.

Yeah. They're trying to slash costs because nobody reads newspapers anymore. Yeah. Nobody buys them. Nobody subscribes to them. And online it's free, except for that kind of weird-ass ad revenue thing that I still don't really understand. And the downside is, I mean, we're losing good news.

Well, we've lost journalism. I mean, should I start my Huffington Post rant now? No, let's not go back to that. Jesus fucking Christ. Beat that dog dead. But, yeah, and this ties into the other article you sent me this week about losing.

This isn't so much about losing the middle class, but it's more about people working for free. Yeah. Yeah. The story was, in the digital economy, we'll soon all be working for free, and I refuse. It's from The Guardian in the UK, so it's a bit UK-centric. But it's pretty much talking about something I've been worried about for ages, which is nobody wants to pay for anything anymore.

And we're all continuing to produce. We're all doing stuff. And a lot of us are doing it for free in the hopes that something, like, say this podcast. This podcast, yes. Hopefully something may financially come our way, but what people are generally finding is it's a bit like the lottery. The YouTube people that are recording their stuff 24-7, trying to hit, thousands upon millions of thousands of millions of people are on YouTube doing stuff, and 0.01% of them actually make any money.

And the side effect of that is they're all still producing content, so there's always something to watch. There's always something to read. So even if they're not making money off of it, we're still being entertained. We're all still being entertained. We don't want to pay for shit. And what's going to happen? I don't know. Because you can't, you know, there's no, until we have the 3D printer that makes our food, we're still going to need the raw materials for it, and we're still going to have to buy those.

I think I'm going to have to start transferring all my stock to, like, farms and agriculture at this point, because you can't pay your rent for free stuff. No. You know, it's great that we're all getting it for free as consumers, but if you're a producer and if you're trying to do a job, there aren't going to be any jobs left.

Everything's free. Well, I'm guessing that most of the people that are producing this are unemployed anyway. And I think it's ironic you mentioned the 3D printer that can make food. We've created a 3D printer that can make a gun, but we don't have anything that can make food yet. I know. Although I have seen some cake decorating 3D printers that are kind of sexy.

And on the printer subject, again, we have a 3D printer that can make a gun, and I can't get a fucking printer to connect my wireless network. Well. But, yeah, this whole idea of this everything being free, you know, I saw the Jaron Lanier article a while back on Slate, which we'll throw in the show notes, and he's got a book coming up that's called Who Owns the Future, which I've already got on my iPad, but I haven't started reading it yet.

He goes way in-depth into how this Internet thing is creating like a serfdom, really, because we're all just sitting there making stuff and consuming things, and the people that are controlling the bandwidth and the distribution networks are the only people making money. They're the kings now. Yeah.

Yeah, we talked about this book on a previous episode, and you know who I'd like to get? I'd like to get Jaron Lanier and Clay Shirky in a room together to just expound on this, because I love Clay, and I love Jaron, and I bet that would be one of the most amazing talks ever. It would, yeah, we probably couldn't get that together, but maybe Ted could.

Ted, you guys should get those guys in a room together. I don't know. I know Clay. I can probably reach out. Let's do it. I don't know Jaron, but yeah, and on the same thing with Jaron, if you have never read Clay Shirky's books, he's got a great book called Here Comes Everyone, which goes into basically, you know, how we were all producing this content 24-7, and a fantastic read.

I highly recommend it. It's just one of those things where you go back to Star Trek, since this is grumpy old geeks, where they're, you know, in Star Trek there was no economy anymore. There's no money. You don't get paid to do things. Everything's kind of taken care of, and you do it out of altruism or whatever. We've kind of stepped ahead in terms of, like, we're not getting paid, but there's not that whole, like, sustenance behind everything where we don't have to worry about shelter and food and clothing.

And taxes. And taxes. Kickstarter in the balls. News came out that, I don't even, I mean, apparently they're kids of famous people, but whatever. Zosia? Is that how you'd say that? Zosia? Zosia and Clara Mamet's Kickstarter meets little support.

Oh, dear. Their last name's Mamet? Yeah. Would that be David Mamet? Yes. The Mamet sisters, as it were, who are now a thing in a band doing folk, body percussion, in air quotes, body percussion folk. Okay, what the fuck is body percussion?

It's what happens when you don't have to work for a living. So, like. But the, yeah, she's also holding a ukulele. So, or banjo? It's a banjo. It's not a fucking ukulele. Sorry, I'm still stuck in Hawaii a little bit. Apparently. Jesus. Yeah, so another semi-celebrity people who apparently needed more than $29,000 still.

Okay, so it's a $32,000 ask. They got $2,600 so far. There you go. Aww. So that's like 13 seconds of a program that their father produced on TV. Yes. That he got paid for. Pretty much, yeah. So. I mean, I love David Mamet.

Don't get me wrong. Yeah, but why do you have to love their kids and think they're creative? I don't. And what is body percussion folk? I just, I just played some for you. Oh, the man boob rim shot. Man boob rim shot. Ooh, we gotta patent that. Dot com. Dot com.

All right, so more fails on Kickstarter. Can you guys just knock it off, please? Just because you were somewhat famous 20 years ago, or you're the offspring of somebody famous, doesn't mean we want to fund you for crap. Yeah, absolutely. All right, thank you. Kickstarter. Bye.

Oh, so you call that an opt, do you? Yeah. It's crap. So, I got a new app this week, because I love photography apps on the iPhone, because there aren't enough of them. You know, there is a serious problem with not enough camera apps coming out for the iPhone.

I'm sure. Yeah, you know, I only have... Smell the sarcasm. Yes, I only have like 200 of them on my iPhone, and I'm a sucker for them, because I'm hoping that one day I'll find a good one. Okay. Camera Plus, not a good one. Hate that thing. I could go through the fucking list for hours, but my new one, which is the worst piece of crap that I've gotten in a long time, is called Camera Noir, by Pacific Helm, LLC.

How much did it cost? We'll get to that. Their previous hits include Checkers. I like Checkers. They made a Checkers app. Okay. So, I can see how they have the skills and background to do a photography app that would be world class, Jason.

Exactly. Yeah, I didn't really kind of factor that in. I think I saw this one on Daring Fireball, so fuck you, John Gruber. It was not cheap. I can't remember what the price was. Okay. It was more than one cent, which means I paid...

Less than $500? I paid more than it was worth. Okay. So, I have gotten... I've played with it for about an hour. Mm-hmm. Out of that hour, I have gotten four... Count them, four... Four. Photographs. Okay. It crashes incessantly.

It is interminably slow to load. Okay. Twice as long as the load to take a photo, and has crashed my phone, like the actual phone OS, several times. Okay. Now, what is the niche or the feature that caught your eye and made you think that this is something that you want?

High quality, black and white photography. They've got three different modes for different settings for contrast, like low range, mid range, and high range. Okay. The previews on the iTunes page were stunning. Right. It looked beautiful.

And this is the weird part. They've got this square bracket in the middle, because I assume that they think that you're taking photos for Instagram. Right. And I've tried to change it. I'm like, why can't I make the square thing go away and just get a full frame thing? But here's the rub. It takes a full frame photo every time.

Right. The square is just visual whatever, hoo-ha-ry. Hoo-ha-ry? Hoo-ha-ry. I like that. And here's the other thing it's got. It's got a levelator. A levelator? Not like what we use for the podcast to get the levels. Not an audio levelator.

No, it's literally got a red line that goes through the middle, and it turns green when your phone is perfectly straight up. Okay. The only way this works is if your phone is at a 90 degree angle to the ground. If you tilt your phone, you can't get a level. Oh, I was about to say at least you could use it for construction.

Nope. No, not even that. Okay. Nope, get that free level app that gets bundled with a fart sound app, and you're in the flashlight, and you're good to go. That's a trifecta there. Flashlight, fart, and level. Yes. I have all of them. Yeah. The Camera Noir, though, skip, skip, skip.

I don't care if they come up with updates on it. They wasted an hour of my time. That's a billable hour I lost, so I'm like, you know, money in the hole at this point. A little annoyed? Okay. Yeah. Yeah, skip the Camera Noir. Checkers might be fucking fantastic, but I'm telling you right now, these guys can't take a picture for shit.

Okay. I'm going to go ahead and chime in here, too. I'm not going to say it's a crap app, but I'm going to follow up on one of my great apps that I pimped a couple of weeks ago, which is the Trivi. I ended up paying for it, like I told you, and it just mysteriously stopped working two weeks ago for me.

And, you know, two weeks of emails to their support, not a single response yet. One of them titled, hey, guys, I actually paid for your app. No response. Here's the rub. I only played Trivi with you.

Yeah. So that means the app's broken for me, too. So I should write them as well. Yeah. Well, you probably should. It's a little bit annoying, but I get it. And I call back to our little segment about, you know, they're probably not making any money. Well, they made at least six bucks off of us. They made at least six bucks.

Minus 30%, whatever. Yeah, minus blah, blah, blah. But I can get why they're probably overwhelmed with support to the free people, and they're not making any money and kind of going, why are we doing this again? You know, that's bullshit. That's bullshit. But it is bullshit. I bought your app. I wrote your support two weeks ago now, and I haven't heard a single word back, and my app just won't load.

And it's not me. I've done all the tech support stuff, you know, deleted, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all of that stuff. So there you go. So Trivi, not so happy with you right now. Fix it, because I love playing the game. This week in false advertising. We've been doing this podcast in my house, and I'm kind of by the beach, and I've got these big windows where the sun comes in, and it gets really hot up here.

Really hot. Jason used to be quite sweaty until he was smart and brought shorts over to change into. We cranked the AC before, can't have it on, during, because it's loud. So I, you know, thought about this for a while and found these great blackout blinds, and they're all motorized, and they're super cool and everything, via 3-Day Blinds.

Did you notice the name of the company there, Jason? 3-Day. That would be 72 hours. Right in the title of the company. The company's name, 3-Day Blinds. And I noticed on their website, because I checked them out. And it says, we'll come to you. Oh, they did come to me. 31 days ago. 31 days ago?

And counting. Because as you notice, there's only two sets of the blinds up. I think they're off by an order of magnitude. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And apparently, the three-day that they must be running with at this point is they actually have to come here three different times to do installation, because apparently it's going to involve three.

One's done. Okay. They're going to come a second time to do one set of windows. And then the third one will be another month from now. Well, it doesn't say three consecutive day blinds. You got me on a technicality. Okay. I'm just going with it. Security.

Ha! So, this new format, I'm going all meta here and talking about what we're actually doing. This new format actually works really well with the Michelob Ultra, because that crap goes right through you. I don't think I can sit here for 30 minutes straight drinking this. Dude, you're proposing alcoholism again.

We talked about this to Beach Mama. Sorry, Beach Mama. I'm a bad boy. Okay. You are. That's not a dig. That's not a dig at all. No, it's not a dig. I just want to say. It's funny. It is funny, because it actually kind of does.

And trust me, go back to your old Monty Python. I bet you know Monty Python, Beach Mama. This Michelob Ultra is like making love in a canoe. You finished the joke. Okay. So, guess what I got today? Yes. I got my first LinkedIn scammer spammer dude.

Scammer spammer dude. Took him a while to get to LinkedIn. Well, I approve a lot of people that I don't know. When I look at their CV and say, okay, well, maybe I would like to know this person. And this one did kind of resonate with me. It's like, I don't know. And then I was just like, ah, fuck it.

Keep clicking. Let's approve everybody. Right. And this would be Barrister Williams Harry from the UK. Okay. So, I'm thinking, eh, what's the harm? You know, I got all sorts of people that follow me on LinkedIn. I got like a whopping like two, three hundred connections on there.

Nothing major. Do you post on LinkedIn? No, I don't. Okay. So, why would some random Barrister follow you? Because I used to, no, because I used to run Metblogs. Okay. So, I've got like, I've got like a shit ton of Pakistani nationals following me. I got a bunch of people from India. I got people from all over the world following me on LinkedIn because they used to be writers for me.

But you must be on some lists. Well, I can't go to Pakistan. I already told you about that. I cannot go to Pakistan and neither should you. So, but anyway, I got this thing from him and he's like, oh, I'm the executor to the late client Brian DeFillippo, herein referred to as my client, who worked as an independent oil magnate in my country and died in a car crash with his immediate family on the 4th of October, 2006.

Right. I'm like, okay, well, I'm a DeFillippo. We are immigrants from Italy. I figured. There is no DeFillippo who is ever or shall ever be probably an oil magnate. And I was reading this and I'm like, oh, you got to be shitting me.

So, this is the, you know, Jamaican. No, it's a Nigerian. Nigerian. Nigerian scam. And same thing, basically to a T. And he's like, oh, I just need 50% of, you are entitled to $136 million and I need all this money up front just to cover my costs because I do not want to.

Impede upon you any further. Correct. So, I did a little bit of research and I went to some of the sites that, you know, catalog all of the names that these people work under. And Williams Harry is a name and Barrister Jonathan Harry is a name.

So, Barrister Williams Harry. Right. Let's see what they did there. It's a new one. So, it's the same shit. Yeah. So, if you guys are getting any of this new LinkedIn spam, just. Be aware. Yeah. It's there now too. His profile has already been deactivated.

So, you know, people have. Figured it out. Chimed in. Right. So, what else is going on in the security world? Well, this morning I woke up to the NSA collecting phone records for millions of U.S. Verizon customers. And I am a very happy and proud Verizon customer and have been for years.

I've always told everybody that if you want a phone that actually works anywhere in this country and abroad, you need to have Verizon. But there you go. So, every single phone call, text, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, the government is more than aware of, has, is able to see, is data-based, is there forever for them to go ahead and look through.

Which I kind of have a problem with. Well, I am not a Verizon customer. I am not a happy Verizon customer. I am a very disgruntled. Oh, I just hit the microphone. That was wrong. No, I was trying to point at you and give you some, like, pointed reaction.

I am a very disgruntled AT&T customer. And if you remember, AT&T are the company that had the black box room in San Francisco where they basically just snarfed everything. Yeah. I'm used to it. So, get over it. It's not like any other cell phone company isn't doing this.

This is the way of the world now. And it's time to kind of recognize that and realize it. It's still – I'm of two minds on this. The first is it's disturbing because I still kind of grew up – we're grumpy old geeks. We're not younger geeks. And we grew up with some semblance of what privacy is and it matters, unlike people today who just don't seem to care.

So – but on the other side of things, I don't really give a shit if the government is looking at what I'm doing because I'm not doing anything too crazy. Well, you should because what they're doing is illegal. 100% illegal. Okay.

Friend of the show, Dr. David Teeter, who will hopefully drive his ass down here next week and join us instead of sending me snarky-ass Facebook comments. I enjoy reading your comments as well. Please come down because I'd like to talk to you about why you think that the Constitution thing and all that stuff still exists because we all know it doesn't.

In his Facebook comments today, he worked in the intelligence industry, industry, whatever. He was in intelligence and they drilled into him the rules of engagement which basically state that everything that the Obama administration is doing is flat out no-go, hands-off.

You don't do that shit. This comes after the Nixon shit back in the day and starts with the McCarthy hearings and all that. I mean, this is why we need him here because I can't speak as an expert on it. But I understand the point that the fact that everything that they're doing with this is completely illegal.

Right. And they couch it in terrorism and they say, oh, well, it's a threat to national security. We need to know who – it's not that we're trying to catch the – we're trying to catch who the terrorists talk to. So, okay, the delivery guy at Domino's is now waging jihad on pepperoni.

What the fuck? Well, you know, George Orwell was just a couple years off. I mean, we all kind of knew that. This isn't George Orwell. No, no, no. This is 1984. This is Big Brother. No, dude. You have them backwards. There were two books back then that laid this out.

There was 1984 by George Orwell. There was A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Yeah. Huxley won. Okay. Wow, that's a good point. No, this is all about Huxley. Okay. So, go back and reread those two books. Go back and reread. We have sealed our own fate with those.

Well, it's interesting because immediately after, because proving there is still journalism, apparently it's just in the UK, though. Yeah, it was The Guardian. The Guardian had a nice article about the administration completely just saying all of this collecting of phone records is completely legal and cool and we're happy it's happening and we're not going to stop it.

No, they're not going to stop it. Of course they're not going to stop it. Once you open that box, you never go back and that's just the way it is now. So, there is no privacy whatsoever with any of your cell phones, Snapchats, all that sort of stuff. Nothing. Nothing. It's just all gone.

Again, to a certain extent, I know I should care because it's technically illegal, but we're never – it's very illegal. No, you shouldn't care because it's quote-unquote technically illegal. If it's legal, they can do it. If it's illegal, they can't do it. Right. That's – there's no black and white.

I mean there's no gray there. That's black and white. Right. It's Nixon. Well, if I did it, then it's legal. Right. That's the same fucking argument. Yeah. I just don't – how are you going to stop it? How? Yeah. I mean that's where it gets weird.

Yeah. And again, the other – well, I mean it is the argument to kind of justify it is if you're not doing anything wrong, why do you care? That's not the point. That is – I agree. That is not the point. I agree it's not the point. That is the worst argument ever. I agree. I agree. You know, everything that we do is recorded now and saved forever and searchable and – well, this goes back to – there is no privacy anymore.

Well, there's a great talk from the HOPE conference, Hackers on Planet Earth. Yes. From a private detective called Steve Rombaum. Yeah. Who – it's funny. I went to HOPE one year because my girlfriend worked for 2600, surprisingly.

Yeah. That I had a girlfriend back then. And there was this whole kerfuffle that was going on because somebody – like the feds came in and raided the conference and took out a speaker. And it was Steve Rombaum because he was getting ready to give a talk called Privacy is Dead.

Get over it. Yeah. And where he talked about this guy that he had basically tracked down who was a fraudster who was passing himself off as a prince of Austria but who was actually an FBI informant and, you know, went to jail, spent the weekend in jail and turned out he got tons of people fired and – because he was in the right.

Everything he got was from like Freedom of Information Act stuff. It was all public record, trial records, all this stuff. Right. But his talk, while the aforementioned Dr. Teeter can drive his ass down here and refute me, says this guy's not legit, seems legit to me.

I listened to probably a good hour of the three-hour talk today and it was – I don't see how it's not legit and I'd love to hear some people tell me why not too. And he brought up – I think the most valid point that it brings up is the fact that this entire generation, you and I included now, because we live and breathe on this stuff, social media, et cetera, we're giving away our privacy.

We are using free services that are under no obligation and in their terms of service say that our stuff is not really that private and they are obliged by law to turn over their records to whomever, whatever government entity, if need be.

We're telling them what we're doing all the time, where we're doing it, who we're doing it with. We are willingly informing the entire world of what we're doing all the time. We're giving away our privacy. We are – and it's also – it's not required by law. The government can just buy it.

Yeah. Because these – It's all for sale. That's the point. These are all private – no, they're private corporations and they can sell the data as long as their TOS says, we have the right to resell your data. Which they all do. Yeah. So, you know, it doesn't – they don't even have to have like a FISA request, anything like that.

They just can basically go and say, oh, the Domino's pizza database was one of the biggest sellers because it had everybody's phone number, had everybody's – it was one of the biggest, you know, sale points. I just – I recommend everybody – we're going to link the video in the show notes.

Just drop three hours, go watch it, and make up your own mind. You don't even need to watch it. Just let it play. You can just listen. No, the slides are good. Yeah, the slides are good. I mean, it's worth it. But, I mean, three hours is a big commitment for a lot of people. Put it on your desktop. Walk around, do whatever you need to do, cook your dinner.

It's really eye-opening and interesting. And it's all stuff that if you're a super geek like us and listening to this, you already know. I bet it's good stuff. It's really good. And it scares the fuck out of you. Yeah. And I would say, forget Brian's thing with put on audio.

Get the entire family. Pop some popcorn. Put it on the Apple TV. And make little sissy and junior and the wife sit down. Or if you're the wife, make the husband watch. Or if you're the daughter, make your parents watch. Just sit down and watch the whole damn thing, soup to nuts.

And then make up your own mind. That's all I'm saying. But let me quickly turn this around to us now. Because we just talked about how we're giving away our own privacy on all these social networks. Just last week, you were talking about how you're diving back in. And you're going to be all in on the social networks and get yourself out there again.

And you're contributing, right? I mean, you are giving away your own privacy. Well, no. That doesn't mean that anybody can look at my phone records and see where I was at at any given point without a warrant. Right. Or a record, you know, a judge or court-ordered warrant.

Okay. That's what they're doing. All right. This is different. So you're willingly choosing the times and places that you're letting everybody know where you're at. I never share geolocation. Right. Unless I'm on vacation. He's in Venice right now. Yeah. Somewhere on Rose Avenue.

Come blow his shit up. So, no. I don't do that. I never do that. Right. Just because it's nobody's fucking business. True. If I'm at a restaurant and I post a picture, sure, I'll geotag it so somebody can check out the restaurant if it's a great restaurant. But you are aware of the fact that pretty much everybody else does.

It's their own fucking fault. Okay. It's not my problem. It's the fact that I have the choice. Right. I want the choice. Okay. No, I totally understand that. So. Yeah. I don't know where we go with this. It's a different world now. You and I are kind of anachronistic with this stuff because we kind of see it as a problem.

And I don't think most people do. You know, I posted this NSA article on my Facebook earlier this morning right when I woke up and I read it. And I usually get a lot of comments on whatever it is I post, not a one. Yeah. No one, no one, no one cared. Yeah. No one sees it as important or interesting.

So I don't, I don't know. Well, that's, that's where the, the systematic erosion of, you know, privacy and rights kind of goes out the window. If they mention it helps catch a terrorist, then they get a free pass. And everybody goes, oh, okay. Well, not okay.

I mean, granted, I don't know how to fix it. I'm not a constitutional lawyer. I'm just a nerd who likes to type PHP and play Quake. And yeah, but I just, I can see what's happening and I, it bugs me, but that's it. That's all I got on it. It's just, it's where we're headed with everything.

I mean, I was talking about that when we were talking about the cloud too. I mean, as soon as we move from pushing our own personal data away from our own control and putting it out there, that means it's searchable, it's findable, it's hackable, it's all gone. Yeah. And, you know, go back to the old days.

They could check your library records. Same thing to see what you're reading. But you know what? We're done. That's it. That's all I got. It's the library. I kind of like devour authors when I find out an author I like.

I will go through their entire au revoir, as one would say, within a matter of weeks or, you know, months if they're like Vonnegut and they have shit tons of books. So when I do that, it kind of leaves me lost by the time I'm done because I don't know what else to read.

And I know it's going to be two years or never, if they're dead, before I get another book. Don't read dead authors. Don't read dead authors. No Shakespeare for you. So I put out the call on Facebook, I need a book to read. And a friend recommended a book called Horns by Joe Hill, which I just downloaded and read and really enjoyed without doing any research whatsoever.

And, you know, then you go back to the Kindle store and, oh, there's another one. Okay, so I downloaded and read that. Oh, that's pretty good, too. Kind of horror genre, a bit like, if you can imagine, you know, Rob Zombie kind of slasher flick with blood and gore everywhere as a book and being interesting and really good ideas and kind of funny and tongue-in-cheek and all of that sort of, right up my alley.

Great books. Sounds like it. And then I got the new one just came out called Nosferatu, spelled N-O-S-F-R-2. That would not be an F, that would be a four. Oh, four, sorry. N-O-S-F-R-2. N-O-S-F-R-2.

Nosferatu. And I just finished it, and it was really good. And this is when I finally discovered who the author is, and it's Stephen King's son. No shit. No shit. Wow. And not surprising, given the first two books, because they were kind of horror and, you know, had that kind of feel to it.

But it's Stephen King's son, and a pretty damn good writer in his own right. Nosferatu, which I just finished, is a bit of a departure from the other two books, in that he went a little bit more Stephen King-y. He's trying to be his dad a bit this time around.

That's too bad. Which is, yeah, yeah. It's still, it was a really good book. I really enjoyed it. I would recommend going back and reading the other two by him, particularly Horns, which was really great. And apparently it's about to become a movie starring Daniel Radcliffe as the main character.

Which is, if you want to talk about breaking your role. This character is hard-drinking, lots of fucking depressed. Awesome. Yeah, is not Harry Potter. So, go back and get that one. I still enjoyed Nosferatu, but I definitely felt that he was kind of climbing on his dad's territory a little bit.

It went a little bit more cerebral. He was trying to do kind of that more, like, not blood and guts horror, but like, oh my god, what the hell is happening? Skin tingling. And he even kind of did the meta world thing that Stephen King does, and tied into Stephen King's meta worlds. Yeah, he touched on a couple, like, you know, the IT stuff, and like, dairy and all that.

So, it was the one where the giant spider was the villain at the end? That was it, yeah. Yeah, see, that's the problem I have with Stephen King. It's like, it's really good up until the end, and his endings are fucking terrible. I cannot, I hate, I'm going to say right now, I hate Stephen King. I'm a huge Stephen King fan.

So, like, I watched the first, going back to the videos, I watched the IT at the beginning. Tim Curry is a clown with his crazy sharp teeth. That would have made the movie. You're talking about the adaptations of his books, not his actual books.

I started to read The Gunslinger because you were so hot on it, and I was bored to tears. Best series, well, you have to get through the first one. The first one sucks. Okay, well, you didn't say that, because the first one sucked. Well, I'm telling you right now, the first one sucks, but it's the best series ever written, ever. Overall, happy with Joe Hill.

I'm a little worried about him trying to follow way too closely in his daddy's footsteps right now. Back away from that if you happen to be listening to this podcast. Yeah. But worth a read. Good stuff. Good horror. I think his daddy was successful. So, you know what? Why not piggyback?

There you go. Well, I don't know. I know. Blaze your own trail. Blaze your own trail. And I don't care that he's even writing, you know, horror stuff. That's fine. But don't bring in your own dad's characters and world into your book, which he did. Which he did with this one. Vetter Bolton.

Yes, you should not have done that. Otherwise, still a really good read. I would have loved it if I wouldn't have known he was Stephen King's son. And if he would have left out those bits where I was like, oh, that's from Stephen King. And that's how I then looked and went, oh, Stephen King's son. Oh, interesting. Still worth it.

Go for it. Joe Hill, keep writing. We'll see what happens. The web's not dead. Every week, I find new stuff to love on the web. Even though I hate being on the web because it's my job. Yes. Every now and again, something comes across my desk that just makes me go, holy shit, that's genius.

My new favorite, I have to say, is a website called thisiswhyimbroke.com. Yes. I used to love ThinkGeek, as I believe you did, too. Yes. ThinkGeek was my favorite site for getting gifts and my own fun stuff to have around the house for the longest time.

And back when it was cool, I used to have my Schrodinger's cat is dead. My Schrodinger's cat is not dead shirt. Yes. Yeah, tons of great t-shirts from that place. I got more comments on the street from that shirt than anybody. People would be like, what's a Schrodinger? You know, so I had to say, I would teach them about theoretical physics.

It's like, well, it's a thought experiment. Let me explain this to you. Yeah. But now it's like everybody's got that shit and you don't want it anymore. Yeah. But here's the deal. Thisiswhyimbroke.com is not a producer of goods. Yes.

He's a curator of goods. Goods that seriously tickle my inner nerd taint. It's like... I'm pretty sure they probably have something specific for that on the site somewhere. I'm sure. Maybe the medieval hand blades?

No, you probably don't want that tickling your taint. The what? The medieval hand blades that I see right in front of you right now. Oh, the medieval hand blades, yes. No. And that reminded me totally of Faust, the old comic that was, you know, very short run. Back when I liked comics like 30 years ago. I still don't understand why these fucking middle-aged guys are into comics nowadays.

I just don't get that. But yeah, the medieval hand blades were good. And the Sub-Zero MacBook sticker, which is like Sub-Zero for Mortal Kombat, making the thing with the Apple. Yeah. I just saw that tickles my inner geek more than anything, because I was a Mortal Kombat fiend. You sent this link over to me earlier today, and I honestly wish you never had, because I don't even know if I want to bookmark this, because there are so many things I want on here.

The Space Invaders couch for $5,000 is killing me. And the Water Jetpack for $100,000, which I have to have one, Jason. I want that, too. Dude, that thing's been around for a while now, and it's so awesome. Just check out the Water Jetpack YouTube videos.

The JetLev is what it's called. Just go to YouTube and check out JetLev. I spent 15 minutes looking at this site earlier when you sent it over to me, and whatever amount of money that 64 or 84-year-old woman won, I've already spent it in my mind. Yeah, I'll take 10 of each, please.

They actually had the full-size Lego X-Wing on here, too, that you could buy. It was like $180,000. It was ridiculous. This out thinks, think geeks, think geek, definitely. Yeah, no, it's hands down my new favorite, just go-to. I want to see, oh, they got the blue laser, too.

I always wanted one of those. They took a blue laser out of a PS3 and put it into this, like, lightsaber handle. Right. And there are so many warnings with it, because you can not just blind somebody, because you can do that with a regular laser pointer.

You can probably kill someone with it. Right. You point at their carotid, it could pop. There is a fighter spaceship bed for $18,000, which looks amazing. The Batman Snuggie is quite amusing. I've seen that. This is endless, like, gift ideas.

This is unbelievable. This is a geek's paradise. Seriously. It just really is. Ooh, the Transformer USB flash drive is pretty awesome. Whiskey ice cube stones. Oh, look at that. No, I've seen those, yeah. Oh, my God. The amplifier fridge. It's a Marshall Stack amp that opens. That's, oh, my God.

That's amazing. You got, you. Okay. We found what Brian's ordering. That is the garage beer fridge from hell. It's awesome. Oh, this site is amazing. Good find. And damn you. I'm just glad that the internet still has a way to tickle my fancy.

We are definitely adding a tip button to our website for this show because I want to be able to buy all this cool stuff. I guess there is still, yeah, this is so, it's curated, so these are all people that have their own websites and, or they submit to them.

How does this work? I think these people just go out and find the coolest stuff. Okay, that's, yeah. And because, like, when you click check it out, it just, like, takes it to their page and you're. Oh, cool. It's all they're doing is. Yeah, just buying stuff over the web. Yeah. I don't, I actually don't even give a shit how they make money. The fact that they show all this stuff and I can check it out.

Yeah. I didn't even do any research. I'm just like, I can't look at that anymore. I can't look at that anymore. I can't possibly understand how they make any money, but, uh, yeah, this is amazing. What, the Han Solo first iPhone case that, yeah. Yeah, I've seen that one. Yeah, good stuff. Uh, wow. Yeah. That was good. Yeah. Check it. Just, just go check it out.

Yeah, I can't even talk anymore because I'm just scrolling. Okay. Yeah, candy, candy, candy, candy. I got a couple new podcasts I've been into because, you know, I listen to podcasts all the fucking time. At three times speed, apparently. Yeah, moving up to 3x. I can't even go past one and, yeah.

Because, I mean, I started at 1.5, then I moved to 2, and now it's like, I've got so many in the backlog. I'm like, screw it. Let's go to 3. Let's see how it works. And, um, it takes some I have to dial down. If the audio quality isn't up to snuff, I got to dial it down. They all sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks.

No, you still, look, once you, it's like, it's like whiskey. It's like scotch. Hmm. It sucks at first, but once you get a taste for it, then you can discern between the voices. All right. We'll see if I come on board with that, but. Oh, well, if you, if it's not inherent in you, you know, for productivity.

I am an audio guy, so it's hard to listen to that. Okay, well, you big pussy. So, we talked before about how to make money on the internet, and I've always, you know, followed all these charlatans and, you know, shysters and all that, just to figure out how they work.

In my travels, I have actually come across, well, let me start first. Okay. I came across a podcast called The Entrepreneur on Fire. Brian, are you ready to ignite? No, no, I'm not. Can you dial it down a little bit there? Okay, I'll do what I can.

Sorry about that. No, not you. I mean, you know. Oh, I thought I might be blowing the levels up. No, I was, I was, I was in character. Oh. Yes, and. Yes, and. Oh, my God. Welcome to Groundlings. So, I found this terrible podcast called Entrepreneur on Fire because we were neighbors.

No, actually, the Entrepreneur on Fire podcast guy was on another podcast that was next to us on the new and noteworthy because it's all a circle jerk with these productivity guys mainly because they're all on everybody else's podcast. Talking about the same stuff. Same stuff. So, anyway, I got to the Entrepreneur on Fire podcast and it was just kind of silly and then I got to this other guy called Pat Flynn.

Okay. He runs what you would think would be the douchiest of the douchey podcasts called the Smart Passive Income Podcast. Sounds pretty douchey. Unbelievably not douchey. Okay. Wanted to learn how to do all this stuff. He was in real estate, whatever he was in.

It doesn't matter. The difference between this guy and all the other guys is he tells you everything about his methods. Okay. So, it's completely transparent. And he's not selling it. And it's not, it's not send me 50 bucks and I'll tell you my secrets. Exactly.

Okay. He does this thing where he literally takes an idea, takes it from an idea to a profitable passive income website over like three months. Okay. What is a profitable passive income website? Well, for me personally, I have yourwallpaper.com, which is a passive income site.

Put up wallpapers, people go to it, click on Google Ads, I get money. You see what I do there, Jason? I try to bring it back for the non-incredibly geeky people that are listening. Well, that's why you're the intrepid sidekick. Do I get a cool hat?

If you want. All intrepid sidekicks usually have a cool hat. You don't want a cool hat. You have fucking amazing hair. Why would you want? That's true. I got good hair. Okay. Yeah. I'm jealous. I'm going to scalp you one day and wear your head around online. So, but this guy does, he has really good interviews with people who talk about things that are current.

Right. Like he did, he did, uh, the test a couple of years ago and a lot of the tactics that he used are no longer relevant because Google caught on. So he'll bring people on that are like wise in the ways of current SEO stuff that aren't also aren't douchey that are like telling you how they're doing it.

That would actually be really interesting to me too, because the SEO. The SEO world changes so rapidly these days that who knows? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You need these guys that are like in the trenches figuring out like, and literally it's like, okay, well, if you're going to have a hundred links to your site, only have 20% of those that have the actual keywords that you're looking for because Google knows now to look for like human patterns in linking ranks and algorithms.

Exactly. So, I mean, and he's, he's, he's easy to listen to. He's got a good quality, good quality sound. Um, I think he's got like 63 or maybe he's in the sixties in the episodes. Right. He's only been doing it for like, uh, like a year and a half or something.

Right. But, um, actually really good information and not douchey. And I, you know, I listened to him, I listened to the shows and I listened to the people he has on the shows and he's got a really good eye for picking people that aren't scammy, which is, you know, I didn't think this existed.

I honestly didn't think it existed. I mean, the SEO world is, is a mire of muck and disgustingness. Yeah. Yeah. And this, this guy just kind of cuts through the shit, you know, and in, in a world of most Isley, Pat Flynn shot first.

All right. So I'm down with Pat Flynn. Uh, good on you, man. Seriously. I, I, I didn't, it's like a fucking unicorn and rainbows. I didn't think it existed. So, and I have one more. Okay. This is the PHP town hall podcast.

I've never, I'd never thought in a million years I would listen to a podcast about PHP. I'm finding that concept a little frightening. I've learned more in the past two days. They've only got seven episodes. Okay. So hence I can catch up three X done.

I had two and a half on the treadmill this morning. Don't know if I can have a chipmunk teach me about PHP. It's a British chipmunk. By the way. Oh, even better. Yeah. So it actually makes it kind of. Alvin. And, um, these guys actually drink way more than we do.

Oh, respect. Yeah. Um, so it's Phil Sturgeon and Ben Edmonds are the two hosts. Okay. Uh, Phil is part of the PHP framework interoperability group. And named after a php fig. PHP fig. They, um, they basically are trying to do standards for all the frameworks out there so they can like talk to each other and all this stuff.

Right. And I've learned a ton. I mean, literally a ton of what the current state of PHP is from these guys. I feel like I've been living in a cave. They've got new package managers out there where composer is the big one that everybody's using. Right. That is like, if, if, if you're, if you're in the PHP world, there used to be pair.

That was the PHP package thing where you could just type in, not go to the command line. It would load your libraries and that you could use. Yeah. Pair is a clusterfuck. Yes. Uh, composer is, is the new hotness. Apparently everybody's, everybody's loving it. And they're, but they, they put out specs for like, uh, auto loading standards, coding standards, all this stuff.

So everybody can talk to each other. So when you go grab a package, you know that it's going to work out of the gate with your stuff. You just said grab a package. Yep. They do talk about packages a lot, which is pretty funny. And every time they say drinking show, every time they say package. So I dig, I dig these guys a lot.

I mean, there were a couple episodes that were just like, I'll just delete, but, uh, they were going into sexism because apparently somebody wore a, uh, uh, uh, these two hot chicks went to the UK PHP users group and wore a t-shirt that said, enhance your pH penis.

Okay. That's kind of clever. Actually. I thought it was funny as hell. I'm just like, yeah, that's clever. And they went into this whole thing about sexism and coding and all this stuff. Right. Programmers. I'm like, the chicks wore it. So yeah, they, they did it. They chose it, whatever. And whatever.

I think it was funny. And the girl they had on the show thought it was pretty funny too. So it was, it's like, why are you guys harping on this stuff? But anyway, the, I'm going to start digging into more PHP podcasts. So if anybody that's listening has any good recommendations for PHP podcasts, please send them to me.

Jason at grumpy old geeks.com or go to the contact form on grumpy old geeks.com. So Brian can see him too, even though he's never going to listen to it. Never going to do anything. Index dot index slash old dot PHP man over here. So, and I did find out my new, my new go-to framework that I'm going to start checking out is Lauravel.

Well, I'm going to follow your lead on that because I'm looking for a new framework and trying to figure out which one to settle on. Yeah. I mean, and in my, in my interview process that I went through before that we had unfortunately talked about, that was one of the, one of the frameworks that they were talking about in one of them.

And I'd seen it before, but it just wasn't quite there yet for me. But now I'm, I'm starting to see like how these guys are approaching frameworks and it's not the same as it used to be. Yeah, because that always turned me off when I, when frameworks first came on the scene that I just didn't dig it.

And maybe now I will. So, well, I mean, there, there, there's two, there's two methods of thinking with frameworks. There's one that it's like, it's a be all end all. We've got everything you need to be the other, which is my, my personal like, uh, methodology with frameworks is it is as lightweight as possible, but has hooks into everything.

It'll do the heavy lifting for the code and let me write my own stuff. Yeah. I mean, that's what I want to, yeah. My framework is basically a URL routing scheme, you know, that's it. That's like the main crux of it with an MVC backend and just the, the, like the tiniest of footprint.

Right. And that's what Laravel is kind of going for too. And then you can bring in stuff from like symphony or other frameworks and just package by package just for what you need. I know we got geeky here at the end, but I just wanted to say, check out PHP town hall and, uh, and, uh, Mr. Pat Flynn on the smart passive income podcast.

I'll have some more next week because I'm just devouring these things like mad. Cause I'm doing it. You are, you are all over the podcast. It's three X, three X. Closing shout outs. I want to do a shout out for one of my, uh, really good friends, Suzanne Casamento.

She actually has a book out on, uh, Amazon for Kindle, et cetera. It's a young adult book called fingerprints. So it won't, uh, really be up a lot of people's wheelhouse as it were. At least I'd listen to this podcast. Not too many geeks want to read a young adult novel, but, um, you know, she did it and it's awesome.

And I'm really proud of her. So check it out. If you want to fingerprints, Suzanne Casamento, also a shout out for her web endeavor, which is more up our, uh, grumpy old geeks audience. Particularly if you're a single woman, I think we have many of those. No.

Damn it. Whatever. Fantasydating.com. Check that out. Cause, uh, she's taking a stab out there. I know her. Yeah. You know her. Oh, I've been on that project. Yeah. Well, that's her book. She used to be a journalist and a writer and, uh, she's got a book out now. So. Oh, good for her. I totally know her. Go Suzanne.

We're really happy and proud of you. So, and, uh, maybe we'll get you in here too, to talk about, uh, your experiences with the, uh, web world. So. All right. Well, good for her. Yeah. So. So, yeah, I think, uh, I think this new format's working for me. I'm liking it so far.

So, uh, we'd love to hear what you think. You got other segments you want us to try out? You don't like what we're doing? Let us know. Yeah. Just, uh, the contact forms on grumpy old geeks.com somewhere because I'm changing everything. So, yes, everything is changing. Figure it out when you get there. I'm sure, I'm sure if you can, uh, read, you'll be able to find the link that says contact.

But this is, uh, still fun for me. Fun for me. So we're going to keep doing it. Yeah. So. And play around. There pretty much is. I do want to give a shout out to, uh, mammothhq.com again. Yes. Because, uh, we still use those guys for organizing our show notes and, uh, basically prepping the show.

It's turned out to be really good. You guys really do need a print option though. Yes. We, we futzed around with that for a while before. Hence all the printer noises earlier. The print option does not work well. Mammoth HQ is actually fantastic. I'm loving doing it. Um, it's actually making me switch browsers as well.

Oh, good. Yeah. I'm finally getting off Firefox. I've been on that forever because it used to, well, hey, for a long time, you couldn't see me rolling my eyes for a long time. It was the best browser out there. It hasn't been for a long time now. For like a decade. But, uh, it's got me switched over to Chrome because it's a lot easier to deal with mammothhq and drop, you know, links in and all that stuff right away.

So, yeah, uh, it's a great service. It's absolutely fantastic if you're doing community work on a document or something like that or, you know, just exchanging ideas with a friend. It's great. Yeah, it's a great little pasteboard and, uh, keep rocking it, guys. Yep. Thanks very much. All right. Uh, we'll see you next week.

We'll see you next week. Keep up with the Grumpy Old Geeks on the web at GrumpyOldGeeks.com, on Facebook at Facebook.com slash Grumpy Old Geeks, or email them at podcast at GrumpyOldGeeks.com. Have a good week. Okay, last one to kill a bad guy buys the beer.

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