23: The Best Technology Podcast Ever!

All right! Crumpy Old Geeks. Two old farts, a microphone, and the internet. What could go wrong?

How's your week, Brian? It's been a little hectic and a little crazed and a little busy. I've got my laptop bag open in front of me and I'm starting to shove in all the stuff that I need to take with me when I travel. And I've got a suitcase downstairs that, well, right now is just full of shit for people in Toronto that I'm huffing over there, but I've got to fill that up with some clothes.

And, yeah, busy week. Crazy week. Okay, when you're done in Toronto and you give away all the stuff, can you fill it with maple cookies and just bring all those back for me? Yeah, I will definitely be bringing back some maple cookies and my usual standard two to three large tins of Tim Hortons coffee.

I don't care about the coffee. I just want the maple cookies. Those are those... Oh, God. When the last time I was in Toronto, Jay Goldman introduced me to those, and I'm just... Even just thinking, when you say Toronto, all I can think of is maple cookies. Yeah, the maple cookies are super good. They're really tasty.

Yeah, but for me, it's all about the Tim Hortons coffee, and if I could smuggle those damn breakfast sandwiches back, I would do that, too. I mean, they just, hands down, beat the shit out of an Egg McMuffin. I could never have an Egg McMuffin again, so... Oh, well, I don't want any then, because I like Egg McMuffins. You'd never have a Tim Hortons breakfast sandwich, then it will ruin you for life.

Okay, deal, deal. It's a bummer you're busy. I was hoping you could FTP me a couple hours. I am so overloaded. This thing I was talking about last week, this responsive WordPress thing I'm working on. Yeah, yeah. Oh, man. It's a pain in the ass.

Yeah. It's really hard to kind of... Not even just the coding bit, which is a little... It's definitely a pain in the ass, but designing for something that looks great everywhere is not easy. Yeah, yeah. I had some conversations with a designer this week about how this thing was going to scale and how it was going to work, and my thinking was, oh, it needs to look good on smaller windows.

So I don't know where the wires got crossed, but he sends me back a design that's 1920 pixels wide for a browser. Yeah. Like, we're going the wrong way. We're going the wrong direction here. Like, I know that, you know, mobile is becoming more and more and more important, but I just don't know if it's...

Well, you know, we've run into a bunch of issues here. Clients aren't really necessarily willing to pay for two designs for a site, but, you know, I think that there's a significant design difference between somebody looking at it on their browser with a huge window versus the phone. And I still like having completely separate sites for mobile and for regular.

See, now, this is an interesting... It's interesting that you say that, because what I was dealing with this week was some of the Book Apart books. Yeah. And I had never heard this term. I can't believe it. It came out... It's like a 10-year-old term, but instead of graceful degradation...

Yeah. ...where you have a fancy site that kind of looks crappier as you go down, progressive enhancement, where you start with the basics and you add on to it as you grow. Yeah. Which is, when you think about it, a great way to, you know, a great design methodology when you're trying to deal with mobile and smaller screens with lower, you know, lower screen real estate.

Yeah. Like, start small and then grow with it. And just going into that mindset and thinking back about it, I'm like, it's genius. I can't believe... This is the thing. I've been out of the front-end side for so long and getting back into it now. I'm learning, like, these guys have been doing a lot of thinking.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's some super cutting-edge stuff being done with all of this, and it's really cool and really interesting. But it's also, as you're discovering, really difficult. I need to spend a lot more time playing around with it than I actually get a chance to do so. Because, I mean, honestly, I'm just too busy to...

I need a project, basically. I need somebody to pay me to get in there and futz around with it rather than just do it on my spare time. See, that's what the great part about this project I'm working on is because I've actually read the book that we'll talk about later, the Responsive Design book. I've actually read that book cover to cover and had forgotten everything about it.

And last week, I read it cover to cover again. But as I went, I implemented everything in the book, and now it all makes sense. And now I've got a really good, solid tool set for going back and building adaptive and responsive type of layouts.

And the crazy part is the HTML and the CSS part, I didn't find that hard. That part, I did not find too hard. I've got it doing some cool, crazy things. Like when you resize to a certain thing, it goes to a grid view versus a list view and all this other stuff. It's commonplace now, but I haven't actually made that before, so it was really fun to go back and make that.

Yeah. And the hard part is getting all this crap into WordPress. That is the hardest part. Just doing a basic theme. I found a theme that I guess some of the internal WordPress guys use. It's called Underscore. I think that's the name of the theme. It's like a bare bones theme that they use whenever they're going out to build another theme.

Right. And I find it's a mess, so I'm actually pulling all of the stuff out of there. The problem that they have is they have to deal with so many use cases and failovers and implementations. I'm like, this is straightforward. I need the most bare bones theme to start with.

Or I could just go back and literally start from scratch. But who's going to do that? Yeah. I had a project a while ago that was a WordPress one for responsive design. And I was looking through a shit ton of templates trying to find something that at least got me kind of close. And ended up – the coding is such a mess and how you have to implement things is just a nightmare.

So I went back and just found a total bare bones one and just built things in piecemeal. Yeah. I think I should end up going back and doing that. Because there's a lot of custom code that has to go in this too. And it's like I'd rather just not deal with anybody else's crap. Just give me a bare slate with empty files that are the WordPress theme structure.

And then I'll just go from there. So – but I mean I finally did get into flow this week with coding on it. That's the other thing. I haven't moved very much in the past four days. And it's killing me. I woke up this morning.

My hips didn't work. I had a thinking – a thought hangover from just thinking all day and looking at code. It's like, oh, man, this is – we're getting old. We can't do this shit like we used to. Yeah. I just – I definitely can't. I can't even sit for like more than three to four hours in a stretch anymore.

I've got to get out and do something, take a walk, take a bike ride, whatever, which I'm still doing and I'm still using my Moves app. So we're on week three using that. Yeah, I did some tests this week as promised on Sunday before I dove into this crazy work thing.

I did – I had a 10,000 step day on my Fitbit. Nice. Moves tracked 4,800. Really? Yeah. That is a beyond significant difference. But that's not really all that surprising because Moves is, as far as I can tell, completely based on your GPS coordinates at all times.

So if you're just – if you're taking steps and you're just staying within like a square foot, I don't think it tracks that at all. And that's a lot of steps that we do, you and I or most people. You're standing at your desk. You're turning around. You're walking a couple – maybe a foot or two.

Then you're turning around and walking back another foot. And I don't think Moves is catching that at all. Yeah, definitely not. I mean, and those 5,000 steps that it lost were basically going from my car to the house with a bunch of heavy boxes because I was moving again. So it was definitely within the same – within a quarter acre, all those steps were taken.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, as much as I do like the Moves app and it's super pretty, I'm starting to really doubt its accuracy. The continued theme with my bike rides, it's the exact same bike ride I do every day. And the variations in the mileage that I'm riding is still there.

You know, today it said it was 8.5. Yesterday it said it was 9.5. The day before it was 10.1. It's the exact same ride. Yeah. Yeah, so I'm scrapping this app for now. Maybe in six months I'll come back to it. When the new phone comes out in a couple weeks, maybe it'll have more accurate GPS for, like, apps that are in the background.

Right. Because that could be a problem because it's in the – since it is running in the background, it's not pinging as often for getting an active GPS signal. Yeah. Yeah, I'm also interested to see what happens when I take this to Canada, so. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, I have noticed because I did look at the maps on Moves.

Yeah. So, highly inaccurate. Highly inaccurate. Yeah. Like, I'm – the drives that I'm taking are pretty straight and the walks that I'm taking are pretty straight. And it's got me cutting through fields and over mountains and all this shit. It's just like, oh, no. Yeah, I noticed that, too.

Apparently, I was biking in the ocean yesterday when I looked at the map, so. Oh, sweet. Yeah. I was like, wow, that was quite the ride I had, except I didn't, so. That's some Richard Branson shit right there. Do you have a supermodel, a naked supermodel on your back? Oh, I wish.

I wish. No, no. Just a, you know, crazy homeless guy from Venice. Trying to fling his poo at you? Yeah, trying to fling his poo at me because I didn't give him a cigarette, so. Awesome. Yeah, this is – I'm done talking about this one for now. It's dead to me.

Dead to me. Yeah, I got to figure out what I'm going to do. I mean, I've gotten used to the idea of having something like this. I mean, I might just have to, you know, go ahead and get one of the new Fitbits or maybe, you know, there's that basis watch, which is spectacularly ugly. But it's also really expensive, and I'm not ready to dive in on that because I don't know anybody that actually has one yet, so.

Yeah, wait. Definitely wait. Because I did the fuel band right when it came out. You know, I did one of those things where I got in and got lucky and got one when they released it. Like, you know, the 10 a day that they were handing out. Right. And I got it, and it was completely useless. So, that was like, you know, 180 bucks down the tubes.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm a little bummed. I'm going to try – I'll keep with the app at least over my trip and just kind of see what happens because I want to see. I'm especially going to be doing a lot of walking in Toronto because it's a total walking city. So, we'll see. I'm just a little bummed that now that I know that it's just not very accurate at all.

Yeah. I hope it forces you into metric as soon as you cross the border. That would be great, but somehow I doubt that. I'm actually really interested to see what the bandwidth is going to be like. I mean, I do – you know, I love Verizon. I've been with Verizon for ages. I mean, I love them as much as you can love any cell phone company.

They all suck. But they do offer this great, like, international data roaming package that I can just switch on the days that I'm in Canada and switch off as soon as I get back. So, I'm hoping I'm not going to have a crazy-ass cell phone bill. Yeah. Good luck with that. Yeah, I know. Yeah, I've actually been on the fence because the new iPhones are coming out, and I'm getting one the instant they come out because I've still got my 4S and I'm done with it.

Right. And I'm on the fence about switching to Verizon over AT&T. I've been through hell and back with AT&T. Excuse me. And I don't know if it's worth staying or going. Yeah. You know, when I originally got – when I came back from London to move back here to Los Angeles, I was on AT&T.

And I just, for whatever reason, they just can't seem to get their shit together here in L.A. It's what – AT&T is just horrible. There's so many dead zones. And once I switched to Verizon, I just never looked back. I'm really happy with them. Okay.

I know a couple people that have the same experience, so it might be time to make the move. I would say go for it. I mean, they've done something that no other company has ever done for me in any walk of life, really. I remember – this was about two years ago. I got a call from Verizon just out of the blue, and they said, we've analyzed your bill, and we think that there's a cheaper package that would serve you just as well.

They actually dropped their own price on me and went out of their way to tell me about it. Well, that's impressive. I know. I was like, you guys just made a customer for life. Now, that's how you do it, people. Wow. Yeah. No, AT&T definitely has not done that. My only downside is I've got this thing called the Founder's Card, which is – it's a rewards card or perks card for entrepreneurs.

It's not cheap, but it comes with a really nice AT&T perk. So I get like 20% off my bill. Oh, well, that's pretty impressive. Yeah, so that's – I've got to factor that in. Oh, well. Okay, enough of that. I'll figure it out.

I'll flip a coin. Fuck it. Yeah, and I'm not going to keep pimping Verizon for free. Feel free to advertise, guys. Good luck with that one. Yeah, I know. So one of the things that was driving me nuts this week was on that project, like I told you, it was – I'm dealing with 1,900 pixel-wide designs.

Yeah. You can't really build one of those on a 13-inch MacBook Air. No. No, you cannot. I've only got 1,440. I can't make it any wider. And I got to – oh, man. So I had to bust out my iMac. I've been – ever since I got to Pennsylvania, I've been barely using my iMac.

And I've been using my shiny new Air that I picked up on the trip out here. Right. And I love it. I love this thing. But when you need screen real estate, I'm just like – I'm not about to go buy a monitor when I have the iMac. So now I'm dealing with keeping both of these machines kind of in sync, working on the same project or different projects.

And just keeping everything in sync has just been kind of interesting, to say the least. That's always an issue for me as well. So I definitely would love to hear any insights you might have. So a couple of things. I mean, Dropbox is gold. Yeah. I mean, I cannot live – I am a Dropbox Pro member, have been for a couple of years now.

And I'm only using like 20 out of the 100 gig I pay for. But that 20 gig saves my bacon all the damn time. I've actually put my iTunes library in Dropbox. Oh, really? So when I'm on – whichever machine I'm on, I just make – you can only be on one at a time or it just goes bug nutty.

Right. But I just make sure I quit out when I'm done and then open it back up and it keeps them in sync on Dropbox. You can just load it right up. And the only way I could really do that is I use iTunes Match and I deleted all of the local songs. Right.

I had everything match except for the ones that it couldn't find a match for, you know, like my really crazy, rare, you know, punk show stuff. Yeah. All the live bootlegs, all that sort of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. But everything else, it's like – so I've got like a, you know, like a 9 gig iTunes library.

That keeps in sync great. Right. Highly recommend that because you were talking about how you were going to do it with a PC and a Mac with iTunes. And I think that might work for you. You might want to give that a shot. I might try it out. I mean, what I've got going on right now is working pretty well. But, you know, I can't access my library when I'm on the road or anything.

And I would be able to with Dropbox, which is pretty cool. Yeah. And here's the – you can do a quick test on this. The really easy way to do it is, well, on the Mac, when you open iTunes, you just hold down the option key. And it will ask for you to find a library or create a new one. Right. So you can just create a new test library and save it in your Dropbox folder, throw a few songs in it, and then go let it sync over to your laptop or whatever machine you want to go to.

And then point – do the same trick and load that in and see if they sync up. They should. They really should. Yeah. I might give that a shot when I'm traveling. I'll do that. Set it up before I go. And then when I get to Toronto, I will see if I can listen to some of my tunes. It'll be pretty sweet.

Yeah, but the one thing for projects, for what I'm – the kind of stuff I'm doing is I use Git for all my source control stuff. You know, if you're not using Git, just stay away from me. Subversion or, God forbid, CVS, those things are just dead.

After using Git after, like, five years of subversion, it was like a giant weight was lifted off my shoulders. I cannot tell you how nice working with Git is. And for my local repos, basically, I save them in Dropbox.

And what I've got going on is I create a local repository in Dropbox. And on both of my Macs, I've got a copy of Tower, which is a really great Git client. And I have them both kind of pointed at the same thing. So they both stay in sync. So I can work on one, don't really have to do anything, and then just open it back up, open it up on the iMac or the Air.

And it's – all the files are there. Everything's in sync. And I can still commit to it and do pushes from it and all that kind of stuff. It's really handy. That sounds fantastic. I really – I'm not using Git or anything at this point. And it's something I've been meaning to start doing just because you need to nowadays.

So I'm going to have to take a look at that and start getting into that. Yeah, I don't know what a good Git client is for the PC. Yeah, that's the only problem is I'm still kind of bouncing between both PC and Mac. I haven't 100% committed to the Mac yet. Yeah, I mean, if you did, development life is so much easier on the Mac.

Yeah, I know. Because for local stuff, I use a program called MAMP Pro, which basically runs MySQL, Apache, PHP, the whole nine yards in a little package that overrides the built-in stuff that the Mac comes with. Yeah. And I can basically run that on both of them.

I point it to a folder in the Git repo. So I've got a working version of whatever site I'm on on both of my machines. That's fantastic. The only caveat is the damn databases, trying to keep those in sync. That's my little hitch right now is trying to keep those in sync because you have to run the database locally on each machine.

Right, yeah, yeah. So if I'm doing a WordPress install, they kind of got to be synced up. So I'm probably going to write a little script that will do a little sync across over the network and kind of keep those in check. But it's a pretty cool little thing. If I can get that done, I'll probably post it to the Grumpy Old Geek site so we can kind of play with it.

Cool. Yeah, that'd be fun. Yeah. And like the other stuff I'm using is I just use Coda 2 from Panic, same guys at MakeTransmit, the great FTP client. And between that, it's like I can build anything in that damn app. I used to use BBEdit all the time. That was my go-to for like 15 years.

Yeah, yeah. And for some reason now, I don't know if this just happened in 10, because I went away for a while and I was using Eclipse and different IDEs for PHP work. But I tried to get back to using BBEdit when 10 came out. Yeah. And this is such a geek little thing. In PHP, all the variables have a dollar sign in front of them, right?

Mm-hmm. I double-click on a variable, it will not select the dollar. Really? Yeah. That's stupid. It's such an annoyance that it made me just say I can't use it anymore and went to Coda. A lot of people on the boards have complained and said, can we please get a toggle for this?

And there is one in Coda. You can actually have it selected or not selected, depending on your personal preference. And my personal preference is, goddammit, select it. I'm trying to copy it. Yeah, that would drive me insane, actually. It's the little things like that that really can make or break a program for you.

Yeah. I mean, I still use BBEdit. I keep it open all the time for a bunch of little utility functions. And it's great. I can't recommend it enough, but except for that one little thing, which is a pain. Yeah. So I'm working on getting the system down where it really kind of jives.

It sounds like you're really kind of getting there. And I'm a tad jealous because I'm still a bit of a mess when I'm trying to, you know, because at home, I'm basically working on my desktop tower, my PC here. That's my main thing. And then just trying to keep things synchronized when I have to travel for a few days. I got to throw everything onto my laptop and get going.

So you've got quite the setup going on here now. Yeah. I mean, I just live out of Dropbox now. It's never failed me. I still run Time Machine backups on both my Macs, so it gets to the Dropbox folder. So if anything catastrophic happened, I still have it. Right.

You know, and I can go back and go through, like, history on it. But to just keep all my actual work files in Dropbox, and if I'm doing, like, hardcore stuff with big files, I just pause it. Yeah. Pause it while I'm working. And when I'm done, turn it back on, go have a beer, hang out, relax.

And then it syncs up, and then I can switch to my Air or my iMac. Right. And it just works great. Keeping everything in Dropbox is worth every penny. Or, you know, even if you're doing other source control stuff that you want outside access to, like, use Beanstalk or GitHub.

I prefer Beanstalk over GitHub because they do a lot more with deployments and things like that. So you can actually push code right from your repository on Beanstalk out to your server or multiple servers at the same time. Right. Which is fantastic if you're running, like, 10 servers, which I have been, and they've been stellar.

Great. That's good to know, too. Yeah, that's a great one. I wanted to get you hooked up on that. That was before we started the damn show. That's why we were hanging out, because we were going to get you set up on that. Yeah. And still haven't done a damn thing. Yeah, yeah. I think your willingness to change is not as strong as you may think it is.

Yeah, I know. It's, you know, that happens when you become a grumpy older geek. You get kind of locked into ways that you've been doing things, just because, you know, it comes down to time a lot of the time. It's like, I know I should be switching over. I know I should be learning something new. I should change up my entire routine.

But then you get slammed with a project, and you're like, if I try to use the new thing, it's going to take me three times as long, because I don't know it. And I can just bang this out right now, going my old, stupid way. Yeah, but the great part is, it's like, if you just take the time, then you have a new thing that is probably going to save you more time over the long haul.

No, exactly. So it's just been a matter of me finding the right time to go ahead and make that switch. And it's coming soon, man. It's coming. Trust me. Yeah, definitely. And, oh, the other thing, I've got a PC laptop that I use for testing. Worst piece of crap I've ever bought.

It's an HP running IE or whatever, Windows 7. Right. And I need it for IE testing. But I was trying to do the updates on it. I hadn't booted it in two months, which means seven hours of updates, you know, just to get it back up to normal.

Yes. And in the middle of it, I remembered, we talked about this on a show. Modern.ie, I think is what it is. I can dig it back up. But that's the one where Microsoft gave you all of the virtualization versions for IE testing.

And I'm like, oh, Jesus. So I got all my IE parallels instances going. And by the way, that will take you a day. You will burn a day if you want to get all of them. Right. Because they're about 10 gig each. Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense. And I get five megabytes per second download here.

And it still took a day. Yeah. Absolutely insane. Because when you when you load up those those instances, you still have to patch them. You still have to run the standard Microsoft Windows update on them to get them up to speed. It's like, come on, guys. Can you if you're going to give us something, can you at least like make it up to date before you put it out there?

Hey, it's Microsoft. What are you talking about? Yeah. But that's a that's a great testing tool. So now I now I can keep everything on the iMac. So the iMac is for is basically for doing front end design and back end design or back end coding is the air. So that's my that's my delineation.

Yeah. Yeah. See, I'm definitely 100 percent going to have to switch in the relatively near future because I cannot use Windows 8 and there's only so much longer. I'm going to be able to get away with running Windows 7. Yeah. Yeah. So Windows 8 is completely unusable. If you're a developer, it's just it's just a piece of crap.

It's I don't understand where they were going with that. And I don't understand what they're going to do next. But it's a nightmare. So the full time Mac switch over is inevitable. Well, those new Mac pros are looking pretty sexy. So we'll save up save up 10 grand. We'll get you one.

No shit. They're going to be pretty pricey. Yeah. So I'm going to I'm going to try and put together a little how to on what I'm doing here. And we'll throw it up on the site just for reference. And we can go back to it and kind of play around with it. And, you know, just mainly a reference for when you're looking to figure out how to do something.

You don't have to call me in the middle of the night and say, how do I do this one thing? I think that's a great idea. It'll work. It'll work for both of us. Yeah. And there's some pretty cool tools for front end design, too. I want to throw out there with this. I've got a little package list that I'll put out there for people who are trying to get into front end design and using a Mac.

Because now that I mean, I did it 20 years ago, but I stopped 15 years ago because it was such an annoyance. And now it's it seems that people want to hire me for it. Right. So it's time to get pro about it. So I'm going to get pro about it. And as we'll share some knowledge, drop some knowledge, drop some knowledge.

Yep.

In the news. So American or Scientific American had an interesting article this week. Yes. 23 signs you're secretly a narcissist masquerading as a sensitive introvert. Yeah. I started reading it because it was pretty funny because right below the fold, it has 22 signs your dog's an introvert.

And it basically seven signs that Kanye West is secretly an introvert. And it basically goes off on it starts off just making fun of all these lists about introversion and crap like that. And that's that's been huge on the web just in the last week or so.

I mean, it started with the BuzzFeed's 31 unmistakable signs that you're an introvert. And by the way, BuzzFeed, I could go off on them forever. This is dumbing down society. And anyways, but yeah, so then there was a bunch of different articles that appeared on it. You know, Slate wrote about it. Salon wrote about it.

There was something about, you know, how it's now super cool to be an introvert. And it's the you know, it's just huge right now for whatever reason. Yeah. And I mean, about a year or so ago, there was a great book called Quiet, the power of introverts in a world that can't stop talking, which which I had read.

And I thought it was a pretty good book because I'd always kind of self identified as an introvert. As do I. Until I read this article and turns out, as they say, turns out I'm actually a covert narcissist. If I follow the maladaptive covert narcissism scale.

Yeah, I saw that. Yeah. It basically there's the article comes with a quiz saying that there are actual people out there who are just kind of assholes who don't like other people who kind of fall into the sensitive introversion side where they can kind of co-claim what they what their personality type is.

Yes. But it turns out I think I'm possibly the most horrible person ever to walk the face of the planet if I if I follow this scale. Um, because, yeah, they said, uh, your score was 82 and above you scored high in covert narcissism.

And if your score was above 97, well, you might want to own yourself as a card carrying covert narcissist instead of constantly telling people to stop criticizing you because your sensitive introverted soul can't handle it. OK, I took this quiz myself.

But the problem. Well, I scored two ways. I had to think about it for a little bit. But I overthink things, which I think is a sign of being an introvert. I'm not sure. Um, I scored low when I just kind of answered it off the cuff. And then I scored super high when I thought about specific situations or people that already annoy the fuck out of me.

So, yeah, I scored well over 100. OK, yeah, well, I scored, I think when I was when I was thinking about specific like work situations or some specific people that I don't really like being because I went back and did it again because at first I scored super low.

I was only like in the 50s or something like that. And then I redid it and I was in the hundreds. So, yeah, I mean, 115 is the maximum score and I got 111. Man, you're an asshole. I told you. I told you.

Yeah. So mystery solved. Mystery solved. I don't have to. I don't have to. I don't. Now I can take off the take off the veil and say, look, no, it's just that I'm maladjusted narcissist. What are you going to do, man? Maladaptive. Let your asshole banner fly, man.

I think I've kind of done that a very, very long time. Yeah. It's when I try and be nice is when things go wrong. When I'm an asshole, everything's great. Yeah. Well, you know, you stick with your strengths, man. This is I really did like this article.

I liked a lot of the the, you know, all the different articles that were out recently about introversion. You know, it's pop psychology. It's, you know, especially when you go down the BuzzFeed route and it's just, you know, oh, look, let's find really cute animated GIFs to go with everything. Every point that we make that is really vague.

I mean, this is straight up with, you know, astrology. But it's an interesting topic that I don't think we talk about a lot. And there are a lot of introverts in the world. There are a lot specifically in the industries that we work in. You know, it'd be it.

You know, we kind of you just threw out the Kanye West thing. Being an introvert is kind of a joke. But in my time and in my field and in my experience, I've worked with a lot of people that are extremely public personas. And 90 percent of them are introverts. Like they're able to turn it on when they get up on a stage.

But one on one, they're completely introverts. So. Yeah, and I see that in in some of the people I know in tech, too, that are public figures and basically don't like to hang out with people at all. You know, I think the greatest thing that came out of this this article, though, is he uses the word listicle a lot, which I kind of heard in passing.

But he he this guy brought it out. Let me tell you this guy's name because I feel bad about Scott Barry Kaufman is the author of this. OK, credit where credit is due. Yes. But at the end, a listicle. Basically, people have found out who run blog networks and watch their traffic.

Anything with a number in it, you know, X things to make this something else are the highest trafficked post. That's why if you go to Lifehacker, you go to HuffPo or the Scientific American or the entire BuzzFeed, which is just that.

I mean, that's all the site is. And it's basically taken over the entire web. So he finished it finishes the article. With that said, whoever bans the word listicle from the English lexicon is genuinely brilliant, regardless of their shade of narcissism. Yeah, so true.

So true. So true. I don't know. I mean, it's a weird like this. The world that we live in now, which is basically constantly self-promotion or, you know, Facebook status updates, Twitter. I mean, is it possible to be introverted anymore?

I guess you are if you live your life online because you're not actually interfacing directly with people. It gives you an ability to say what you want and have a voice and still be introverted. Well, that's why I loved the Internet when I first discovered it. You know, it was perfect. Yeah. A prodigy. When I was on Prodigy, I'm chatting with housewives across the world talking about Les Mis and Phantom of the Opera.

Like I was, you know, I was like, did you ever see Zero Effect? Yes. That was a, I was like the detective in Zero Effect. So uncomfortable in my own skin, I couldn't leave the house. Right. You know? So this was like how I got out of the house. And, you know, I'm much better now.

I've medicated to the point where I can leave the house and chat with other humans. But, you know, I don't, I don't know. I love the Internet because it is great for introverts. Yeah. I'm cool with that part. I think it's dangerous, though.

I mean, we have all the stories of those kids in Japan that have basically like not left their parents' room in 25 years. And it's just, you still got to get out there. As much as I love the Internet, too. I say shit on Facebook that I would never say in real life.

And people seem to really like it. It's fucking funny. But I'm too introverted to ever like stand up in front of a group of people and say the crap I spew forth on my Facebook page. Well, yeah, that takes a certain kind of psychosis. Typically a comedian. Yeah. Right. That's, yeah, that's true.

I should probably just fucking suck it up and go do some stand up or something. But, you know, it's, you got to get outside. You got to still go see real people, even if you're an introvert. Being an introvert isn't a bad thing at all, as far as I'm concerned. Most people I know that are incredibly smart and intelligent and well read, they're all introverts.

Absolutely. Yeah. So, but I still think this is funny that I am now completely classified as a covert narcissist. You are. I'm going to have to change all of my, all of my, profiles online. And your business cards. I think you should put that on there. Definitely. Okay. I'm down.

Cool. Yeah. Wow. I don't know. I don't know. What a world. What a strange, strange world we live in right now. You know, a lot of people have talked about how our brains just aren't ready to handle the way that we're doing things now.

And I, I've got to agree. This is, we were just not meant to take in this much information and have this much disconnect between how we can voice ourselves and still like not be around people. Like we, we do it in a vacuum, but it's so public. It's, it's a strange thing.

Yeah. It's really, it is, it is very odd. I mean, people have been studying this since we started doing it, you know, the whole computer network interaction thing. And still it's, we haven't figured it out. No, no, not at all. Not at all. I mean, you know, we're, we're dealing with that, you know, we're, you know, online suicide notes that post after you kill yourself and God, wow.

What a weird fucking place we're in right now. 20 years from now, people are going to look back because hopefully they'll have it kind of sorted out at that point and just go, God, how is it? It's amazing that humanity survived this patch. I know, but you, everybody says that about every, every point in history, because there's always change.

I mean, that, like that XKCD cartoon I posted to Facebook about, you know, people talking about how, when letter writing got so cheap that they could send letters and people were writing shorter letters and it was, you know, destroying the minds of the intellectuals, you know, and it started in the 1800s and it just progressively went down.

It was the best, I mean, it's the best analog to what's going on now. It's perfect. Yeah. Everybody, every generation has thought that, oh my God, we're destroying everything. So I'm not, I don't, I don't think. That we're super bad off. I also just realized how narcissistic it was of me to say that this, this period of time is so fucking bad when it was just, you know, like our grandparents' generation where the world practically fucking ended and they all had to go kill, you know, Nazis and millions of people died.

And I'm bitching about fucking Facebook. Yeah. A little perspective goes a long way. Facebook is so hard. I don't know what we're going to do. Storming a fucking beach in Normandy. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So, uh, speaking of technology that, that is probably rapidly firing way ahead of us and is certainly something that I don't think we fucking need at all. Uh, Skype is going to be coming out with 3D Skype. Why? I don't know. I thought 3D was kind of like dead except for gaming.

I thought, you know, the TVs aren't selling. Nobody seems to be all that fucking into 3D movies. Uh, everybody finally fucking figured out that Avatar was actually a shitty movie. Uh, you know. I could have told you that as soon as the credits rolled. Oh, I, I, I fucking turned around five minutes into the movie and said to the people I was watching it with, this sucks.

Yeah. But, but, you know, it was a big deal. It was one of the, you know, made the most money, blah, blah, blah, blah. I, we don't need, I don't want 3D Skype. I, I don't think even most people are like do FaceTime or, or Skype, you know, video calls if, if they can get it.

We're moving away from that. We want to text. We don't even want to talk on the phone, much less see people, much less see a 3D fucking person. Yeah. In the past 90 days, I've used about 22 minutes on my, my voice, uh, plan. When you go back to the 3D thing, there was a, there was a really good article when the TVs first started coming out.

The way our brains see in three dimensions, we take in, I think it's nine different points of information. Right. And you get one with, uh, 3D glasses. Right. It's either blurry or it's sharp, you know, and like long-term exposure can lead to serious degradation in, in your vision.

Right. So as soon as I saw that, I, I, I got to find that article. That was, it was a long time ago, but it was, it was really good. It had a really good science in it talking about what we use to create, you know, dimension. Right. And it's like I said, as soon as I read that, I'd never want to see another 3D TV and I don't want 3D TV.

Who cares if it's in 3D, if it's in your living room, you know, I'm in a theater, it's a different thing. It's an experience, it's short and it's fun. I, I thought the 3D and avatar was amazing, but the, yeah, the movie was Pocahontas in space. Yeah. Whatever. Basically. But, um, and I never, I didn't get to see life of pie in the theater and everybody said that that was even better 3D and the story was crap.

But, uh, still like 3D is an experience that I want to go check out and in a big theater with sound and everything, it's like, I don't, I don't really don't want to watch Seinfeld in 3D. Yeah. Well, and I don't want to, you know, call my grandma. Look, Skype can't even get it together for the most part to keep a call clear the entire way through.

Now we're going to have 3D, you know, little fucking things. I don't want to talk to Wolf Blitzer. I don't want to have Tupac's hologram talking to me. I don't need any of this. This is way ahead of its time. I don't need it. I don't want it. It's stupid. Yeah. They should really put their, they should put their time and their effort into teledildonics where they can make the best impact in the world.

That's where they need to put their, you know, 3D, screw 3D. No, no. Let's get back to the fucking machines. That's where, that's where society needs to go. They can't even, I mean, because they're talking about mobile devices, like it's going to be years because they can't get the cameras, uh, into the cell phones that are going to be, you know, technologically advanced enough.

I'm like, okay, well just put a big ass port on the back of a cell phone and call your girlfriend and have her do the thing on the other end and that's going to, that's going to be your next big, big moneymaker. Screw this calling grandma and looking like, no. Yeah. What happens if you get that all set up and you accidentally dial your grandmother?

That's, that. Well, then that's a, that's a whole different area of therapy Dr. Drew's going to have to open up shop for. Yeah. No, I'm actually, I am, you brought it up when I, we weren't planning on going this direction at all, but I'm a little surprised that the sex industry.

Has not, you know, pushed forward with technology as much as they could have, especially since they're seeing that, you know, their revenues go down with everything else. Yeah. I mean, there was, there was a great fake website way back in the day, back in the day when see, you see me was a thing. That was the video conferencing we had back in the day.

Yeah. Well, yeah. And, and there was a site called FUF me. It was basically like, like five and a quarter bay drives that you would plug into your, your PC and then you would mount your PC and all it was. Yeah. It was one of the best sites. I can't find it on archive.org.

I don't, I don't know if I dreamt it, but I swear other people have seen it. No, no. I remember that too. I, yeah, there was, there were a lot of jokes about this brings a whole new meaning to mounting our drive. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Oh, rim shop, rim shop. It's a, yeah, I just, I think that people need to get dirty again.

Let's get some, let's have some more fun with the internet. Yeah. Yeah. Shit. I agree a hundred percent. I, you know, I've talked about that off the air and on the air about how bored we are with the internet right now and how it's all static and corporate and yeah, let's have some fun again. Even if it does come from the adult industry, who cares?

They always start things off anyways. Well, they used to, not anymore. Not anymore. Yeah. Yeah. I'm, when was the last time you built a website for fun? Well, I don't even remember what that means. You know, cause I was looking at my archives of spew today and I found a couple other sites that I built that were just, uh, you know, just fun little hacks that had cool stories on them or just tools or whatever.

I mean, used to sit around and build stuff for fun. I can't, I don't know anybody that has built a website for fun that didn't have a profit motive or a business plan or like a funding ramp in so long. It's like nobody builds for fun anymore. Yeah. Nobody really does.

I mean, I guess we use free tools. I mean, people do their photography and post that on Flickr and everybody's doing Instagram and stuff. So they're not building websites. They're not building anything. No, they're not. They're not building anything. They're just spewing crap. They go back to our old argument. They're just giving away their content for free to other people to make money off of.

Yeah. And I think the last one, the last one I really, there were a couple, I did Goatee Peg, which remember Ether Peg? Yes. It was basically a little website that you would go to that would just spew the Goatee image over the wifi. So you could tell if anybody was running Ether Peg because Goatee would pop up on their screen and you could see who would grimace.

And I did a little one called Blogger Code, which was like just a throwaway. But the last one I wanted to do was Ruinous Bastard and I just never built it. And I'm kind of sad that I didn't because it's like, oh, and I'm thinking, oh, but how am I going to make money off of this? It's like, no, no, do things for the joy and the fun.

See, I did the same thing a while back. It was obviously one of those nights where I might have had a little bit too much wine and I was thinking about the internet and stuff we used to do. That's when the best stuff happens. That's when the best stuff happens. I had an entire plan. I still own the domains. I bought ScreamingIntoTheVoid.com and I was going to do something really, really fun.

And then the light of day the next morning after a little bit of Pedialyte, because I think we all read that article today, I was like, well, I barely have enough spare time as it is. Am I going to do my exercise or am I going to work on some music or am I going to build this thing?

And if I build this thing, sure, it'd be cool and all. But am I going to make any money? And then it just kind of got shelved. It's sad. Yeah, we need to take that. Am I going to make any money out of the equation? It does need to come out of the equation. Do it and build it and don't kickstart it. Fund it yourself. Build it yourself. You don't need to fund it. Spend 10 bucks.

Buy a domain. Throw it on a shared hosting and build something fun. You know? Exactly. Yeah. Like we got drunk one night in San Francisco and it was a party night. Literally, we had a naked girl wrapped in saran wrap that was taken around to parties. And there was this guy, this crazy, creepy guy who was following her around all whacked out of his mind on whatever he was on.

And people got pictures of him. So we all went back to the apartment and we created douchernot.com and it was just pictures of that guy. Every click was a picture of that guy. That's pretty awesome. Yeah, we like that. You know, fun stuff like that. Yeah. A listicle site just for fun. Yeah. Couldn't resist.

Yeah. All right. Well, I think that's because it's been such a crazy week. That's about all I found. Actually, did you find that there was not a lot of crazy tech news this week? Yeah. I was thinking this would have been a really bad week for you to start the daily grump because I didn't have a lot of time either.

But every single night, I would just take a quick scan through my sites. And I was like, with a new iPhone coming, there's not the furor and crazy tech news going online that there usually is every week. Yeah, it's definitely been slow. And I've been, you know, just because I've been busy, and thinking about the daily grump, trying to figure out a way to actually make it more entertaining than just me reading the news because that's pretty fucking boring.

And there's enough of that out there. So I'm spending my time, my downtime, coming up with a cool twist. So I don't know what it is yet. And it may delay the launch for a week or so. But I'm going to come up with something cool that's not your normal news podcast.

Fancy. Yes. Ooh, fancy. Ooh, fancy. So, yeah, that's it for the news. I got nothing else. Me either. What a boring week. Welcome to this week in shit we put on our computers.

Okay, remember before we were talking about email and email on the phone and email on the computer, and I said, ah, I don't do any email from the phone. Yes, and I do it all the time. Yeah, well, I changed my tune. I do all my email from the phone now. Wow, that was quick. Well, if you remember a while ago, there was a big brouhaha about this app called Mailbox and their crazy, like, invite plan where he basically showed you where you were at in line.

And I was, like, half a million behind when I first got into it. And I'm just like, oh, well, this is stupid and forgot about it. Then the app came out and I got it. And I set it up and was like, well, I didn't spend any time with it to really get to know it. I'm like, ah, screw it. It's Gmail only.

I've got some IMAP accounts that I need to deal with, so I'm not going to use this anymore. And then they got bought by Dropbox, like, almost immediately. And for some reason, I can't remember what I, I just, somebody mentioned it on a podcast or something.

I'm like, oh, you know what? I'll give that a shot again. Because I've just been having issues with creeping email. Right. And I said, okay, almost 99% of my email goes through Gmail already. Okay. I've got five Gmail accounts.

Right. That I, that I manage on a day-to-day basis. Okay. So I put all five into this app, spent 20 minutes and learned how to use it. Yeah. And I have been at inbox zero since that day. God damn it. That's my dream. It's amazing. It's, it, the way that it handles mail, it's, you're supposed to get it out of your inbox or handle it.

Yeah. Or it's got this awesome feature that lets you schedule it. Oh. And says, you basically, if you swipe to the right, you can either put it in the archive and if you swipe and hold, you can delete it. If you swipe to the left, you get a little menu that says, remind me about this later today, this evening, tomorrow, the weekend, next week, in a month, someday, or pick a date.

Oh my God. Those are the options. Genius. And then it's gone from your inbox. It's gone. Please tell me that this does IMAP now. It's just Gmail. God damn it. So yeah, as far as I know, it's still Gmail. Oh my God. That's such a genius idea.

I would love that because I'm looking at my inbox right now and I have eight emails in there because all of them are something that I absolutely have to do within the next week. Right. But if I, if I throw, like I have folders for every single client, if I throw it into the folder for the client, I will forget about it.

If I could, if I could just tag it with something that just made it go away until Tuesday and then that one Thursday and that one would pop back up on Wednesday, I would be in heaven. Yeah, it's amazing. Oh, I'm so jealous. I so wish I could have this.

So what I've got that running, that's in my doc now. That's in my doc and it's on my iPhone and my iPad. Okay. And I still have the mail app, but it's in a folder with all a bunch of Apple stuff. So every now and again, I'll get, cause my regular IMAP accounts, I don't get that much email too. Right.

So I, I get an alert when something comes in and I can just handle it. But for all of my main mail stuff is all through Gmail. So this made my life so much better. All right. That, that to me is just, I'm blown away by it. It's a killer app. And I really just kind of hope that this concept takes over and like, they'll build it into Thunderbird and they'll build it into everything else.

I love that concept. It's stunningly genius. Yeah. And I mean, you could probably come up with some kind of kludge that you could do something with, like using the, that remind me, uh, app that I plugged a couple of weeks ago where basically you forward your email to that address and it will send it back to you in like the allotted time.

That's kind of a kludge around it. Um, but this just makes it, it's a beautiful app, works great. I am, I am hooked. I love it. And since they got bought by Dropbox, if you link your Gmail account with your Dropbox account, you get a free, you get a free gig because you can store all your attachments in your Dropbox.

Oh God, that's so nice. It makes me almost want to switch all my mail over to Google, but I just can't do it. Google's too evil. I don't want them to have it. They see, this is, this is, this is wearing down. Of, of our, all the, the NSA crap and all that stuff. Yeah.

I'm, I'm to the point where I am so tired that I just don't care now. I'm just like, Google, keep it. I don't do anything. That's the, that's, that's the, the one argument. It's like, I should feel outraged. I should feel miserable about doing it, but I'm just like, fuck it. I want to have a life. I really don't care about me and my email.

Yeah. I'd rather, I'd rather, you know, I've got other things that are way more fun that I want to do than sitting worrying about my privacy and who's reading my email. See, this is the, this is the weird thing because of the two of us, I'm, I'm more concerned, but yet I want this. And for, I'm surprised that you did this because you're the one that started to pull yourself off of all the free siren servers and trying to do your own thing, but yet you leapt in on this one.

Because my email is like, I really don't care about my email. My email is just, it's just client stuff or talking to friends, bullshitting, like nothing really happens for me in email anymore. Period. Right. Yeah. You know, I get, I get jobs, I send invoices and people send me links with cats.

That's it. Yeah. Well, you know, if you're fine with all your pussies going through Gmail, that's cool. Yeah, absolutely. No, this is a, this is a great app. And if it wasn't such a big pain in the ass for me to switch all my mail over to Google, I probably would just, just to have that going on.

Now, do they also have a desktop version or is this purely phone? Like, I mean, I want the same feature mirrored everywhere. You know what I'm talking about? I want it on my phone. I want it on my Mac laptop. And I want it on my PC and I want them all to sync and be able to have this functionality. Yeah.

That part, I see. I think they're just using mailbox labels in Gmail for this. Yeah, they must be, yeah. So I think you can, you should be able to just figure out what the label is and drop it in there. Right, yeah. So, I haven't done much, much work on it because I don't use Gmail on the desktop.

I use, I use the mail app. Right. But it's, it's, it's mercifully quiet now because there's no mail in it. It's great. No, this is, this is pretty stunning. I like this a lot. So, hopefully this is a, this will expand and become something else even bigger.

See, I thought you already used Gmail for apps or Google for apps for your mail. No, no. You actually have an IMAP server. I have IMAP server, yeah, which has actually been fantastic for travel because it doesn't matter what computer I'm using, I load up my Thunderbird or, you know, my phone or the mail app on the iPad and it's all synced and everything is exactly the same, so.

Well, yeah, I mean, I haven't used pop in 10, 15 years, but I didn't know you had your own mail server. I thought you were running Google apps. No, no, I'm still running my own mail server, so, yeah. It's something I might eventually want to switch over, but, you know, that becomes a whole another, if I start to actually pay attention to that one aspect, then I have to start paying attention to everything and then that becomes all overwhelming, so.

Yeah. Yeah, I think the thing that, why they're not going to do this with regular IMAP is just because it's the way that Gmail uses labels and all that stuff. It's really easy. No, it makes sense, so I think that, yeah, that might be coming. I don't know. God, it just freaks me out.

I don't want my mail in Google. I don't know. Yeah, get over it. Whatever, I'll get over it and end up doing it, and I'll be, like, two years from now, and then I'll be pissed off that I waited two years. Yeah, you wasted all this time. Exactly. So, yeah, it looks great. I mean, pretty awesome.

Now, you also had another app that you told me about earlier in the week, so I would download it and actually play around with it as well, and I have, so. And this would be called Circa. Yes. And it's a news app. Yes, it is. And it's a different kind of news app, which is pretty cool.

Yeah, you know, just as a quick follow-up, remember a couple weeks ago, I had found Prismatic, which is also a news app that was trying to do something new. I haven't touched it. I played around with it a while. I'm actually going to take it off my phone. That one was useless.

Didn't care for it. You know, it supposedly, like, tracked what you were reading, and now every time I load it, it's just all, like, Apple news. So, I don't care. Yeah, that was crap. That's a crappy news app. So, if anybody tried that out, I'm now giving it a thumbs down.

But Circa seems, I had some mixed thoughts on it. I want you to go into it first, and then I'll see where you're at. Okay. Basically, what it is, is they have editors who go through the news and go through multiple sources and summarize and give you, basically, snippets about the important, concise points of the story.

And they pull it from multiple sources, and the upside is you can follow a story. So, if there are updates, you're notified about the updates to that story. So, if there's new news, I'm following the Snowden thing. If there's new news, then I get updated that there's been movement on the story. That is my favorite part, by far.

You mentioned Snowden, and I almost, anyways, I'm going to stay away from where I was going to go with that. The following of the news story and just the fact that it's just tiny little updates when they do it is great. Because one of my biggest pet peeves about the media now and news websites and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, is every time that there's a small, tiny little update to a story, because the only way that you make money is page clicks,

is every single site will do a completely new, big, long story about it for one tiny little bit, new bit of information. And this app gets rid of that completely. Yeah, CNN is notorious for that. All the sites are, because everybody wants their page views. So, we end up with just a mass of stupid, redundant, repetitive information that we all already knew, just to get one tiny little new update.

And the fact that this cuts that out completely is amazing. And it's my number one feature for using this so far. I'm loving that. Yeah, and it's pretty. It's well-designed. And you can also jump into the full stories. They link to the full stories.

So, if you want to go deeper, you can. Yeah. You know? So, I'm really loving it so far. So, hat tip to Kevin Rose on this one. Yeah. Turned me on to this one. This is a pretty good app so far. I mean, I'd like to see them build out more categories and drill down a little bit more.

It's pretty basic. It's pretty basic so far. I love the editorial aspect of it, as long as they don't go all HuffPo on us. You know, question number one, as per usual for me with any app, is how do they make money? How are they paying for all these editors? Obviously, it's just VC right now.

But that's one of the things that drives me crazy about getting apps like this, is you start off with it, and it's amazing. And you go, wow, there's no ads. There's nothing. I didn't have to pay for it. Eventually, we're going to have to, or there's going to be ads. Yeah, I mean, you know what? I mean, I'm going to enjoy this now.

Yeah. No, it's... I looked at the investor. They actually list all the investors on their page, and it's got Dave Morin, Gary V, a bunch of other people I've never heard of. Yeah. But they've got a lot of decent investors. So, you know, I'm going to go with it for now, and at some point, they'll either run out of money, get bought.

And I'm sure this is a play to get acquired by a regular news agency, possibly, or Yahoo. Yeah, yeah, it's got to be. But I love it. It's a great concept, you know, because you're a big fan of paring down life and making things simpler.

The internet is, and news sites in particular, are just this mass of fucking shit thrown at you. And this just cuts down everything really quick and concise, and it's great. My news day is a lot faster now. Just in two or three days of using this app, I'm addicted.

Yeah, it's definitely well worth checking out. Yeah. I don't know if they have an iPad version. I just check it on my phone because I don't really read. If I'm going to my iPad, I'm going to Instagram or Instapaper and checking up on my 150 stories I checked out that week.

Yeah, on the phone, it works really well for quick news, and that's the other part. If you're on your phone, you just want a quick hit, you know? Like, give me a hit. Yeah. And it's perfect for it. I don't believe that they have an iPad version yet. And I also, I want a web version. Like, I've gotten so addicted to this for news in just the last two or three days, I want to bring this up on my browser when I'm sitting here.

Yeah, that's true. So I would love them to just put this up on the web as well. It shouldn't just, easy enough, you got all the news, it's right there. Just build a little web interface really quick. Yeah, oh, wait a second here, wait a second, will it be? We plan to make a full web view eventually, but have no clear dates for now.

Please follow our Twitter, blah, blah, blah. But they plan on it. Well, everybody says they plan on doing everything. That doesn't mean it's going to happen. Hey, well, Instagram finally got around to a web version, so. Oh, they do? They have one? I didn't even know. Oh, okay, fine. Yeah, be that way. What?

They do. It's useless because you can't post from the website. But for viewing, it helps. That's a little silly. Well, Instagram for me is kind of on the Twitter area of like, I get everybody's on it. I have it because everybody's on it.

But if you want me to see your photo, you should probably put it up on Facebook because I won't check Instagram that often. I check it daily, just once or twice. You're a photographer, though, and you're into that. I was in a galaxy far, far away. I haven't touched my camera in ages.

Well, once a photographer, always a photographer. And you'll get back to it. We all go through. You know, I haven't played around with my fucking keyboard in ages either. It's just, you know, we take breaks from the things that we love and we get back to them. Yeah. I think I like my favorite thing about Instagram is Tony Hawk posts some pretty cool videos.

I think that's honestly the only thing I really care about anymore is I follow the skater heroes of my youth. Cool. So you got to, this isn't the thing you put on your computer. No. It's the thing you plug your computer into. This is, this actually, maybe we should have brought it up earlier when we were talking travel stuff and keeping things synced.

When I, back in those dark days when I had my iPhone 4 and the battery was crap and I'd be out for a long time, I would always basically be running out of juice and I'd be relying on, on, you know, the kindness of strangers, AKA, you know, barbacks and bartenders to plug my phone in to get me a charge when I was out and about.

So I've been, for a long time, I've been trying to figure out what's, what's the best way for me to have, you know, a charger for my phone. And then it got more complicated because I'm also, you know, taking my iPad out now and all that sort of stuff. And then the other day, thanks to Facebook ads and the site, no more rack, which is another one of those, you know, we have a bit of everything and we sell it really cheap in certain timeframes sites.

Uh, I found the flash chargers for mobile devices and they were doing a two pack for 18 bucks. It says $99 retail, which is obviously a bit ridiculous, but 18 bucks for two chargers. That's that's sweet. That's a good deal. So I went ahead and ordered them.

They came in on, uh, on Monday and we're now recording on Thursday and, uh, I've actually had a pretty hectic week that's involved a lot of driving around, a lot of, uh, meetings, a lot of beings, you know, I basically stuck out here and traffic is so bad.

I can't get to the West side. So I'm going to have to sit around for two hours, three hours, whatever. And by the time I get home, well, work day's kind of done and now I want to be out. So I've had a lot of travel going on and, and I've been using them, uh, the chargers and they're fantastic. It's, they're, they're pretty small.

They easily fit in your cargo shorts. Obviously, if you've got a backpack, that's even better. Um, you plug it right in, starts charging your phone up, starts charging my iPad up. It's great. I love these things. They look cool too. They're not too big and pretty swanky.

They're not too big. It's, you know, it's about the, you're looking at about the circumference of a cigar and maybe about half the, half the length. Um, they're not particularly heavy. Uh, they charge up pretty damn fast. If you plug them, they reckon, well, they show you, you know, they only give you the cord that plugs it into like your USB port into your computer, but I just use the, uh, like the little iPhone, uh, direct wall unit plug and it charges, it seems to charge up a lot faster that way charges pretty damn quick.

So, you know, I just charge them up overnight, throw them in my bag in the morning and, uh, I've got basically, you know, complete recharges for both my, I, I was basically able to completely recharge both my iPad mini and my iPhone five off of one, one of these things with a full charge.

So really? Yeah. Yeah. Wow. So it's, it's, uh, I can't recommend these things enough for once. It's like, I'm, I'm glad I waited a long time and, and found something that was really good as a, you know, kind of travel power. So cool. Yeah. For the price, you can't beat it.

You can't beat it for the price. Like if this thing goes tits up in two weeks, I'm not going to be too shocked, but I only paid 18 bucks and then I'll know, well, okay, those were crappy, but, but this is a, you know, anybody, if these are crappy, which we don't know yet, uh, somebody will make one that's great.

And this is, you know, it's the right size. It's the right amount of charge. It's pretty damn quick and it's super convenient. So it'll be nice to not have to kind of sheepishly ask the bartender if I can charge my phone in again. And, you know, cause even then when they plug it in, you can't access it because it's over by the cash register or whatever.

Now I just pull this thing out, plug it in, sit the, sit the phone right down next to me again. Yeah. I'm, I'm in, I'm ordering right now as a matter of fact, because if we, uh, the, the problem is by the time this goes out, this deal is going to be over. Yeah.

Cause there's only 13 hours left and this episode won't be up in time, but keep an eye out for it. I'm sure they'll bring it back. Cause it's the, it seems to be their number one deal on the site right now. And I think this is one of those, cause I hadn't heard of nomorec.com before and they push this on Facebook, Facebook ads and all that sort of stuff.

So, um, this is their number one deal right now. I'm sure they're going to bring it back. Yeah. And if they're not here, we should see if we can find them somewhere else. Just have, have, have a, yeah, I actually Googled them cause I was looking into it. They have like one of those really, really, really crappy websites that was obviously built by, you know, two teenagers in Pakistan or whatever for themselves, uh, where you can order them as well.

Not at quite a good, not, not such a good price, but, uh, you can get them and it's, it's a bit of a sketchy site, but they're also on Amazon. So you can order them from Amazon. Actually, we should make a link and, you know, pirate, pirate ship it. So, you know, yeah, there, there, this, this, this, the no morale.

Rack site definitely doesn't work very well. Yeah. I'm having some issues with it. Yeah. They're not the best site either, but, uh, I'm intrigued by this normal rack as well. So I'm going to be looking into this cause this is a, you know, we've, we've talked a lot about these kind of like custodial sites, uh, in, in the past, uh, your fab.com and there was a couple other ones.

Uh, this is yet another one where, you know, this is, this is kind of more like woot. Yeah, it is. It is like woot with more stuff. Yeah. So, no, I'm going to get one if I, if they ever let me check out. Yeah. These chargers are pretty good. You know, I don't, I can't, I can't vouch for the, the rest of the site.

I'm looking around right now and there's just a bunch of shit that nobody would ever buy. But yeah. So, but these chargers so far, uh, a weekend, really enjoying them. They're, they're useful. They're easy to carry around and it solved a definite problem for me, which is, holy shit, I'm about to lose juice on my phone.

Now it's not a problem anymore. Yeah. I think this, uh, you know what this reminds me of probably is overstock.com. I think that's the one I was thinking of. Yeah. Overstock. Yeah. So, yeah. Okay, cool. Yeah. So I'd recommend getting them. And, uh, sorry that you won't have them.

Won't have the deal when this goes live, but hey, sorry about that, but, uh, they may bring it back. We'll, we'll, we'll keep you updated either. Oh, I got, I got one more real quickie. Um, plants versus zombies two is out finally. I don't know if you ever played the original plants versus zombies cause you're not a gamer.

My, I just totally blanked out. Huh? What? I see what it was one of the greatest, greatest, uh, iPhone, iPad games ever. I literally played it through from start to finish 10 times because I was waiting for an update and they did a really funny thing with this one cause it took so damn long.

It's literally called plants versus zombies too. It's all, it's about time. This is the name of it. So they made a time travel version so they can say it's about time. Ah, very clever. But this, this version is free with either, you know, work through upgrades.

You know, you can work through to earn your, your boosts and all that stuff, or you can pay for them to skip ahead in the line. Okay. The, the payment for some of the, the plants you get to kill the zombies is so ridiculously high that it just immediately made me say, I'm going to play this game from start to finish and not pay a dime for it, which I've done in four days.

It took me four days in between, in between all the work and literally like in bed at two in the morning. I'd like roll over. I couldn't sleep. I'm like, okay, I'll play a level. I'll play a level. I'll play a level. You know, okay. You're, you're talking to a guy who's last, the last time he, well, I, I bought mist and riven and installed them and then never played them.

The closest I get to playing any games would be solitaire when I'm bored or, um, lumosity, uh, which I can also talk about briefly. But anyways, what, what the fuck happens? What, what do you do? You plant plants that it's, it's, it's a tower defense game with plants versus zombies.

All right. Literally. Do me a favor. Do me a favor. You're going to be traveling. You're going to be on a plane. Okay. You've got a couple hours to kill. It's free. Put it on your iPad and take it with you and try it. Just try it. And tell me next week, tell me what you think. That's it. Okay. I will try it. It's free.

There's no, no skin off your nose for it. Just give it a shot. Plants versus zombies. Plants versus zombies, two. You want me to do two? Okay. Yeah. Get the new one. All right. All right. The grand experiment. Brian plays a fucking game. There we go. So next week we can talk about your, your experience.

That's it. All right. Expanding minds. That's what we do here. One zombie and plant at a time. Exactly. An interesting thing is, has just kind of happened. We, I spent a lot of time talking about the music.

Industry and how it's, you know, kind of falling apart and destroyed. And, you know, we just had the, what are the, what's that? The VMAs. Oh, yes. Yes. The twerking. Yes. With the Miley's, you know, the VMA's big deal was what? Lady Gaga still trying to be groundbreaking and crazy by dressing up as a nun, which I think Madonna did about 20 years ago.

You know, and then Miley Cyrus, you know, being kind of slutty and twerking in front of a bunch of. And she wasn't twerking. That was not a twerk. That was a dead chicken ass rubbing up some other dude. It was nasty. Yeah. So it's just all fucking creepy and weird.

And, you know, then the NSYNC reunion, you know, NSYNC. Fantastic musicians. Thank God they came back. I didn't like them when they were here the first time. Why am I going to give a shit the second? Yeah, exactly. So, you know, music is what music is. But what I do love about the music industry right now, and I think it kind of ties into what we were talking about earlier about, like, why don't we just build web shit for fun?

A lot of musicians that I really liked back in the day are kind of like just, they disappeared for a long time because the music industry dried. They got, you know, dropped from their labels, whatever, whatever, whatever. They're kind of doing that. They're getting back together and just recording because they miss it.

And it doesn't really matter if they make money or not, because luckily enough for them, a lot of them made a lot of money, you know, 20 years ago when there was money to be made. And they're doing other things with their lives now. But then they just went, ah, you know, it's cheap and easy to record an album now.

I don't need a $300,000 recording budget in a studio. I've got a laptop. Why don't you come around? Why don't you come around to my place? We'll open up four or five bottles of wine, and we'll just start recording. And a lot of bands that I really used to love are doing that. And one of them, the big one, she's just put out an album recently called Revert to Type.

Brand new album. Ruby is the name that they go under. It's actually Leslie Rankine with a couple of her friends. Now, she was a big deal a long time ago. She was the original singer for the London kind of, I don't know what you, it was about the shoegazing time, you know, like early 90s, 1993, I believe, a band called Silverfish, which was, they were a bit more rocky than shoegazy, but they were lumped in with that whole scene.

She left that band. She put out a solo album called Saltpeter in 95, which was more trip-hop, and then a follow-up in 99 called Short Staff to the Gene Pool. They were great albums. Unbelievably well-produced, amazing.

Like, I thought she was by far probably one of the best trip-hop artists out there, even beating Tricky, just in terms of, like, every single song on both the albums were just solid. There wasn't a bad one on there. But she never kind of broke. I mean, she had a couple tracks that made it onto, you know, soundtracks and whatnot, and I might throw in a snippet here or there.

If you were around in the 90s, you heard some of her music. But she just kind of then went away. After 1999, she got dropped, disappeared. You know, you can't even find her on Spotify or anything like that. She's just not on there. But she just put out a new album, and it's fucking great.

It's so good, and I'm so happy to have her back. And I think it's just a great thing. So I'm really excited about it. So it's like a shout-out. And the coolest thing is, like, I found her on Facebook about two years ago, because sometimes at night, I, like, Google bands that haven't recorded anything in a long time to just to see if anything might ever happen.

And I'm talking to you guys the Sundays. Listen up. I want a new album. God damn it. Everybody loves you. You're on fucking SiriusXM all the goddamn time. Put out a new album the Sundays. Just please. Anyways. But I found her on Facebook, actually.

And I friended her. And I've actually had some interactions with her, which kind of, like, you know, I don't get flustered when I actually meet, like, super real celebrities. But when I meet somebody I really respect, even if I just virtually meet them, I get flustered. So, like, at one point I was, like, walking around and, like, she commented on one of my statuses.

And I was like, holy fuck, Ruby just commented on one of my statuses. This is the coolest thing that's ever happened to me. But she's super cool. And I'm really happy for her. And the album's really good. So, we're going to have the link in the show notes. And I do believe she is up. At least the new album is up on streaming services.

So, you don't have to, like, commit and actually buy anything. You can just listen to some of her stuff. You know, if you're a geeky coder guy, you are probably into industrial music. She was also part of Pig Face, kind of the industrial super group that had Trent Reznor, Jorgensen, Ogre, all those guys.

She did the song Lips, Tits, Hips, and Power, which is one of their... No way. That was her? Yeah, that was her. So, she's back, and she's put out a really good, kind of updated, trip-hoppy-sounding album with a little harder edge to it. I love every track, just like I've loved all of her previous albums.

So, I highly recommend checking it out. I know this has nothing to do with Grumpy Old Geekery, except it kind of does, because, you know, this is a band that's back from the dead and doing her own thing her own way. Like, no real record label. She's got a distribution deal. Courted it all herself. Didn't Kickstarter it.

You hear that, Amanda fucking Palmer? And there you go. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. Well, I've kind of missed your music segment, so you haven't been talking that much about music lately, so it was nice to get a little music in there. Yeah, I'm going to try to do that a little bit more. You know, I haven't really been listening a lot, because a lot of stuff is really just not catching my ear, but this album definitely did.

So, I highly recommend this one. Well, it's funny. It's perfect timing, because I actually just signed up for Rdio again this morning. I hope. Well, let me know if she's on Rdio. I'm actually, I'm a Spotify guy, so I'm not on Rdio. Yes, we've had that religious war many times, so we won't rehash that.

But yeah, I was just tired. I needed some new music, and I'm not going to go out and buy anything, so I just signed back up for Rdio. And the new app is beautiful, so I give them props for that. Unlike Spotify, which is a fugly piece of shit. Yeah, Spotify is ugly.

I got to admit. So, I'm happy to be back on Rdio, so I'll definitely check it out. Yeah, it's Ruby, R-U-B-Y, and the new album's Revert to Type, and there's some great tracks on there. So, everybody check it out. And it's also really nice, because she's not a young woman. And for her to put herself out there and just fucking do it, and it's just for the love of music.

So, she has no, like, she shot a video, and you see her, and she looks like a woman in her 40s, who maybe has had a kid or two, would look, but she's rocking some great tracks. So, I found it on Rdio. It looks like there are three tracks and then three remixes.

Is that right? Yeah, I don't think the entire album has come out yet. So, she's just been, you know, she's doing it as, figuring it out as she's going along, putting out dribs and drabs here and there. And, you know, maybe she's waiting for a full deal. Who knows? I don't know what she's trying to do at the moment, but it's starting to come out, and I do like everything I've heard so far.

Okay, cool. Well, I got it. I'll check it out, for sure. Excellent. So, yeah, that's pretty much, I think, about it this week. I did mention before about the Daily Grump, or whatever we're going to call it. I'm still working through what the hook's going to be on that, because I'm not just going to read the news.

It will be short bursts, kind of like what we were talking about with Circa. I want to do really short, funny, you know, chunks of news that get you in, get you out. I don't want this thing to be longer than 10 minutes. Right.

In and out, get you up to speed from the day before, and put a smile on your face. That's all I'm looking for. Maybe you just need to Skype in Bob, and he can do crazy voices in the background. Do a little color commentary. Well, Bob runs on his own clock, so we'd be running news from three weeks before, by the time we got him on.

Good point. Yes, there's standard people time. There's standard Bob time. Excellent. Yeah. Well, you know, we'll kick it around. I'll help you out with that, too, as much as I can. Obviously, I'm a bit off the radar for the next couple of days due to travel, but the Daily Grump will be coming, and I will be involved in one way, shape, or form, or another.

Definitely, definitely. So, yeah, I'm going to go move some boxes and write some code, and you go pack. Yeah, I'm going to go pack. We'll do this again next week. Cool, man. I'll talk to you soon. All right. Later. Keep up with the Grumpy Old Geeks on the web at grumpyoldgeeks.com, on Facebook at facebook.com slash grumpyoldgeeks, or email them at podcast at grumpyoldgeeks.com.

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