31: Godzilla, Wyoming, and Apple. Oh My!

Good afternoon, sir. Hello. How are you? It's very early in the morning for me still.

Yes. Well, it's noon here. I'm in the lovely town of Downers Grove, Illinois. Fancy. It is. It was snowing. It was snowing two days ago. What the hell is up with that? I saw. It got down to a chilly 60 degrees here the other night. Three weeks ago, I was sweating my balls off in suburban Pittsburgh, and I get here and it's snowing.

This is ridiculous. Ridic cray-cray, as the kids would say. Cray-cray. Winter hits fast these days. Yeah. So a little housekeeping. Oh, I think I just hit the microphone, but I'm going to try and not do that again. A little housekeeping. I would like to please ask our amazing, awesome listeners, if you like the show, swing by iTunes and just click the little stars and give us a rating.

And if you're feeling super generous, please leave a review. Yes, please. It's been a while since we've actually asked for one of these things, so I don't feel too guilty, but it really helps us out and gets us some visibility and puts us up on the charts. Yeah, and even more important than that, if you've got a friend that you think would like this silly podcast of ours, tell them.

Please. Yeah. We like new listeners. We like more. Yeah. More is better. More. So I've been looking at our crazy stats because Libsyn, the hosting company that we use to distribute this podcast, gives us these really cool maps of where people are when they download the show.

Right. And we've actually been listened to in 56 countries on every continent except Antarctica. And we may have been listened to in Antarctica, but they don't show Antarctica on the map, which is pretty cool. I mean, that's really cool. But the interesting one was the map of the United States because you can zoom in and see which states are the most popular.

Uh-huh. Nobody in the 50 United States of these of ours in Wyoming has listened to this show. 49 states have chimed in, and they like grumpy old geeks. But what the hell is up with Wyoming? Probably not our target demo.

I like Wyoming. I was actually considering moving to Wyoming after this last trip across the country. I was considering it. If you move there, we'll get a download. Yeah. So if you're on a road trip and you just happen to be passing through Wyoming, do me a favor. And just grab like an old episode so we can get a ping.

So this map will turn completely blue. Complete our map for us. That'd be nice. I'd appreciate it. I really would. So, man, this has been a crazy week. It's been crazy. I'm moving around, just seeing the country while I'm doing my job and doing my work and getting ready for the long winter.

As they say in Game of Thrones, winter is coming. Yes. I have – but I've been checking out different stuff online in my little downtime and I found this crazy – I think it's just one of those question and answer forums that's like Stack Overflow.

Yeah. And this kid really, really asked this question and it made me feel so damn old. He says, what are the Windows A and B drives used for? He's like, I know C is the hard drive, but what's A and B? Yeah. I saw you post that and I just – oh, God.

It does make me feel old too. There are really people out there that don't know this that are – I mean, I get like my dad probably doesn't know that and, you know, but this is like super user is the site, which is, you know, these are supposedly some relatively computer savvy people doing things in here.

I know and I still thought PCs came with floppy drives, but I could be wrong. Yeah. I was just like, wow. Because these are tech savvy people who know what they're doing with their computers, but they're like, yeah, why did they start at C?

Yeah. That's pretty crazy. Oh, youngun. There's a great comment in there from this guy, Jeremy Morgan. I asked myself if this was a serious question, then I remembered that the baby's being born while I was hacking up batch files and can now drink and buy houses. So that's true.

Yeah. I mean, there's an entire generation of people that are growing up now that just have no idea of the history of computers and the fact that A and B drives were held for floppies back in the day. I mean, my first computer only had an A drive. Wow.

There wasn't even an option for a B back then. My first one came with an A and a B because it was two five and a quarter floppies. Right. No C. There was no C. No, I had to build my own to get the B. Yeah, I remember my first hard drive and having a C. That was awesome.

Oh, the old days. Yes. But these fancy kids nowadays seem to be thinking they can make a bunch of money on YouTube, which I know you take Umbrens with. I do. I saw you found this great article that just sounds like a puff piece.

Well, it's CNN, so of course it's a puff piece about YouTubers. Please subscribe. Can earn them fame and money. And it talks about the 0.0000001% of people that are on YouTube making videos all the time that seem to be somewhat making a living.

However, they go very far away from ever discussing any actual numbers. Yeah, they don't talk numbers. And it was really funny, this article, like if you read the comments, which is, you know, one of the things I never recommend for any kind of article, never read the comments. Yeah.

The people that they picked for this article were way outside the standard bounds of like the top 500 YouTubers. Yeah. They were picking these weird edge cases. Yeah. Well, I mean, they talk specifically about the double rainbow guy, which is kind of crazy.

Everybody remembers the double rainbow video. It's so beautiful. Yeah. So I was a starving artist for six years prior to going viral. I made $6,000 a year or less breeding dogs, doing photography, eBay, and cutting firewood. When I went viral, money started coming in. Now, this is money started to come in as opposed to $6,000 a year, which is beyond below the poverty line.

So I guess the lesson learned from this article is they're talking money and celebrity. You'll make more money than you did if you just did nothing. And if you were homeless. Yeah. And all that $6,000 obviously went to pot because – well, he said he was sober when he did that, but it was still – Oh, shit.

I don't believe that for a second. No. And, okay, the money started flowing in, but what the hell has he done since? Nothing. None of these hit wonders. Yeah. And how do you sustain it? I mean, that's the same – it's the same thing in the music industry. It's your Milli Vanilles. It's all that stuff.

Hey, hey, hey. Those guys are my friends. No, I know they're your friends, but are they still making money? Did they make money in the music industry past the initial success? No. I mean, that's a fact of life with entertainment in general. I mean, 90% of things are one-hit wonders. They're not sustainable, and you're not building an entire career out of it.

Yeah. Fabrice went on to do radio in L.A., and he made a good living out of that. But the Milli Vanilli stuff definitely dried up after the scandal. I mean, I should have went Right Said Fred, but Milli Vanilli popped into my head. Oh, Right Said Fred. I'm too sexy. Exactly. Yeah.

So there you go. I think that's a load of crap, and I think it's horrible journalism, and it's a horrible piece. And it has absolutely nothing to back up any of their points whatsoever. Okay. Okay. We'll go with that. Yeah.

So as more follow-up about bullshit online, I found an article on Salon that talks about online education and online schools, because we've been talking about that on and off for quite a while now, saying that they're growing at an exponential rate, but they're underperforming almost across the board, which is not surprising.

Nope. Not surprising at all. So more back up for what we've been saying. The article was pretty decent, although they do that thing that I always hate, which is they also focus on fringe cases, and they're talking about an autistic kid and all that sort of stuff, which is like, I just want to see the straight-up, regular, normal kind of statistics.

Don't focus on fringe cases. Yeah. And I haven't read this article yet, but it does one of those things that just drives me nuts. The title of the article is A Question. Yeah. Are Virtual Schools Just Another Online Racket? Whenever there's a question, the answer is usually, well, no or yes.

So why don't you put it in the title? Yeah. Oh, because it's a hook to get people to read it, even if it's poorly researched or whatnot. It's one of those hooks. If you see an article titled that's a question, I generally tend to skip it, just because it's like, why are you asking me?

You're the fucking journalist. Get out and do your job and tell me if they're a racket or not, you lazy piece of crap. It appears that our follow-up segment, which is actually talking about some specific things, is turning into, boy, online journalism sucks balls. Isn't that what our show is?

I think we need to make that a new segment, actually. And I'll just, like, load up the Huffington Post and read the five headlines that drive me the most fucking insane. Side boob, side boob, side boob. Under boob. Little under boob. Side boob. Preg boob. Oh, man.

I do have to give a shout-out again. I mean, we talked about this early on. The audible.com return program is the greatest customer service play I have ever seen. You buy something, and for any reason, if you don't like it, they'll take it back.

And they do say at the bottom, it's in beta, and it's only for, like, power users. I'm a power user, I guess. So I don't know if it's available for everybody. Right. And at their discretion, they'll tell you if you're abusing the program. But if you use it for legitimate purposes, it's amazing.

I got a book that I bought, and I started to listen to it, and I'm like, wait a minute. I've heard this book before and realized that I had bought the book on CD, like, ages ago. And I'm like, oh, I've read this. So I went back and just filled in the form, gave me my credit instantly.

I downloaded a new book, which we'll cover in the library. Excellent. That's fantastic. And I've got to say, I mean, I keep waiting for Amazon.com to screw up on customer service. And there's no doubt that they do. And if you Googled it, I'm sure you'd find a million people incredibly pissed off. But they always seem to work really hard to rectify their mistakes.

I've been an Amazon customer since they only sold books, and I will probably continue to be now that they sell everything. Their customer service, they work really hard on it. So I've always been pretty happy with them as well. Yeah. Dr. Teeter, he ordered like $1,000 worth of these crazy scientific books from them.

And the box came, and it was all crushed. And he just wrote them back and said, hey, what gives? These are very expensive books. And before he could even say anything, they're like, OK, another batch is on the way. Not even send them back.

We'll look at them and whatever. They're like, no problem. Another batch is on the way. Send us the other ones when you get a chance, you know? Yeah, which is fantastic. And actually, I had another friend of mine that's a member of their Amazon Prime, as am I. And he had ordered, I can't remember what it was.

It was something, whatever. He ordered something. It wasn't what he had specifically ordered. It was under a certain price point, so I can get why they would do this. They probably wouldn't do this if you ordered like a $10,000 TV. But Amazon just said, you know what? Don't even bother returning it. You can keep it. We're going to ship you the right thing.

And sorry about that. Yeah, I've had that happen, too. I mean, I ordered a desk. I ordered a $300 standing desk from Amazon. And they sent me two. I was like, I wrote to customer service.

I'm like, you guys sent me two of these. They only charged me for one. So I told them. I'm like, look, thanks. I only got two legs. I can only stand in front of one desk at a time. And they sent a guy over, picked it back up. And when they took it back, they credited me for the extra desk.

So I got a desk for free. And I wrote them. And I'm like, because I'm a karmic dude. I like to think that what goes around comes around. So I wrote them. And I said, hey, you guys credited me for the extra desk. But I still got a desk. So you didn't need to credit me for the one that I sent back because it was a mistake.

And they're like, no, it was our mistake. So we're going to credit you. Sorry for the hassle. Keep the desk. I was like, what? That is pretty kick-ass. That's a $300 desk that they just gave me because somebody put a two instead of a one. You know, that's pretty cool.

And that, dear internet people, is how you keep customers. That is exactly how you keep customers. Yeah. You don't haggle them. You don't fucking yell at them. And you don't squeeze more money out of them. You treat them well. Yeah. Treat them like you'd treat your mom if your mom is nice.

If you like your mom. Yeah. As soon as I said that, I'm like, I know a lot of people who hate their mom. I don't. I love my mom. So there. I love my mom, too. Comment of the week. So the comment of the week comes from Michael Tamal, who left this on our Facebook page.

And if you have not liked us on Facebook, please do. Facebook.com slash Grumpy Old Geeks. He says, I've got to wake up in three hours to get ready for work. Anyways, I really enjoyed the podcast with Mike Vinicor. Brian was hammered. And it was a throwback to the earlier podcasts.

Hope to listen to some more alcohol-fueled episodes. Keep up the good work. Mike. Thank you, Mike. Thanks, Mike. Well, I don't really know if we're going to be doing all that many more alcohol-fueled episodes because that involves doing them later in the evening. And we can't always do that. Plus, I don't really care to do it that often because the next days always suck.

I had really no intention of getting as messed up as I did that day. But I definitely miscalculated how strong the banana Jameson I had made was. Plus, it didn't help that my computer crashed like three times, so I was pounding it. Yeah. And you know, when you put fruit in alcohol, it doubles the alcohol content.

Yeah. It's never good. So, you know, learn from my mistakes. Well, mistake. Hell, it was a fun day. Yeah. We had a blast doing the show. Yeah. So, thanks, Mike. So, I want to follow up on the banana Jameson. Did it turn out as good as anticipated?

It is absolutely delicious. Oh, man. Damn it. And very simple and easy. Just go buy a bottle of Jameson, buy three bananas. Okay. That was my next question. What is the banana to booze ratio? So, three bananas to one bottle. Three bananas, one bottle of Jameson.

Let it sit for about three days. Strain out the bananas. And I liked it a little bit chilled. And it was ridiculously good. So, what did you use to strain? Like a coffee filter or just a strainer? Because I know, like, sometimes you get, like, chunks in there and it kind of screws it up over time. I just use a strainer.

I mean, there was little tiny, you know, little, like, almost fish poopy strings of banana still in there, but whatever. Yuck. Dude. Okay. I didn't go with the most appetizing thing, but it was the first thing that came to mind in terms of, like, just, you know, microscopic little stringies.

Great. But well worth it. Very tasty. And you don't mind a little bit of banana in there. It's good. Banana poo is good for you. Yes. And it's got potassium. It was potassium poo. In the news. Oh, Apple, you little vixen. What have you done?

All kinds of Apple news this week. Oh, man. Free operating system. Finally. Yes, they've officially killed the paid operating system, which will be, I mean, I'm sure it won't really affect Microsoft because that's their bread and butter. But it's a first step to killing that whole paradigm.

I mean, because their profit comes from hardware sales. Microsoft is software only. Exactly. Well, unless you count the surface. Yeah, right. Hey, people seem to like those damn things. I played with one. It was nice. But I didn't mind it either. It's no damn iPad.

No. And I can't stand their OS. I can't stand Windows 8. It's horrible. Yeah, because you said it's not friendly to content creators. It's only good for consumers. Yeah, which is fine on the surface because, well, I mean, you started to do a lot of content creation and stuff and actual work on your iPad.

I still don't. Yeah, and I gave it up because it's still definitely a consumption device. Yeah. So if Microsoft would have kept OS 8 to just being for their mobile devices, great, but not on my desktop. I'm still running Windows 7. So you'll probably be doing it until Windows 9 comes out and they fix everything.

Most likely. That's the thing. You always have to skip the even number releases. It's like Star Trek movies, but the other way around. Yeah, exactly. I was about to say. Yeah, so it's completely free. And I did the upgrade, what, two days ago now? Yeah, it's been a couple days.

I had a terrible time. And Dr. Teeter, friend of the show, had an even more terrible time. I heard a lot of people that left in and did it immediately had an issue, which reminds me of my Windows days and what I've learned from being a Windows user all these years.

Never, ever, ever install the update immediately. Always wait a couple days. And that's always been the Mac rule, too, but they've been so good, so good, and this was just a disappointment. I got in this crazy kernel panic loop where it wouldn't even stay up for a second, and I had to go back to the old school days where we used to zap the PRAM.

Ooh, I remember that. Yeah, and it was dicey there. I lost my machine for like an hour, and I was panicked because my secondary machine is still in Pennsylvania, and I'm like, this is my work machine. I am screwed. I mean, I had a backup, but those take like 8 to 10 hours to restore from, and it was just a mess.

But I finally got it. The upgrade went through. My machine is safe and updated all the myriad of apps that had updates, and I love it. I love Mavericks, 110%, and mainly because it's got iBooks.

I love it. I'm so happy about that because I'm an iBooks author, and that's part of the business that my company does. So I'm thrilled, thrilled to finally have the much larger potential user base, and I hope that people get on board with it. Yeah, it's a great app.

Here's the one thing that I'm going to throw out. With iTunes, you can right-click on a song and say Show in Finder. Yeah. So it will show you on the disc where it's at. iBooks is a black hole. I have no idea. It's like iPhoto. You have to find the library and show package contents and all that crap.

Yeah. I have no idea where iBooks are stored, period. I don't know where they're stored either because I actually haven't even played with it. I've gotten the books that I've written that we've done for our clients up on my thing, but I haven't looked around for it. So it's beautiful to see it on my laptop as opposed to my iPad.

So it's really nice. I'm so happy about that. Yeah, and I've got an Air, so it's like a great bedtime reading device for sure. And it syncs. It syncs through iCloud, theoretically. Theoretically. I mean, all that syncing is starting to drive me crazy, but it's cool, I guess.

I don't know. I mean, iCloud is just kind of a shit show. It's always been. And they're getting better. So my hope is that if we put up with pain for a little bit longer, it will fix itself. I'm going through an experiment right now where I've switched back to Safari because they made all these updates to Safari and it seems to be doing well.

And it does everything at this point that Chrome did. All the extensions, they have sister extensions on both. So I've got my ad blocker. I've got my 1Password. And I'm even going with the new Apple iCloud keychain.

So anytime it says save password, I'm saving it so it's stuck in Safari on my iDevices. Right. So I'm just giving it a shot to see if the promise of what they're, you know, can you smell what they're selling type of thing, if it works.

Well, keep us up to date on that. So far, it's been great. And my move back to native apps, it's been great. The calendar in Mavericks is awesome. Yeah. It's no more fake leather or pleather or whatever. Yeah. They got rid of all that stupid design, which is nice.

Yeah. So far, I have got – the only problem I had was the install. And once I got past that, it's been smooth sailing. Right. Well, so as the grumpy old geek's resident Apple idiot slash aficionado slash fanboy, what do you think about all the new hardware that's coming?

I am – I'm stoked for the new mini. I want to get the new mini and I want to get the LTE version because that's the one thing. That is the biggest downside. I always said, oh, wherever I'm at, I've got Wi-Fi. I only need it whenever. If I had the LTE version of the iPad, it would make my life so much easier.

So I'm going to – if I can get a job, I'll sell my – I'll gazelle my mini and – or give it to a family member and pick up the new LTE mini. But the new full-size iPad, they finally got the weight down. So that's also an option now.

Yeah. The great part about the mini is you can hold it in your hand for a long period of time and it doesn't hurt your fingers or your wrist. Yeah. That was the best part about the mini and also that you can type with both fingers and not have to reach. I mean even with a split keyboard, it's still kind of annoying on the big one.

Yeah. But no, I think everything that came out is rock solid. Yeah, it all looks good. I'm still on an iPad. Well, I've got the iPad mini, the first version. I don't feel the need to upgrade that yet even – I don't really feel that I'm missing out too much by not having retina on it.

So I'm probably going to keep that. However, I do have the iPad 2 generation and that I could probably go for an upgrade. And I wouldn't mind getting one of the new full-size iPads. Yeah. Yeah. Retina on a full-size iPad is gorgeous. Yeah, I can imagine. As a photographer, I loved having all of my photos on there.

The problem is I had to up-res everything. I had to go back to my old Lightroom archives and re-export everything to a library that I then pulled into the iPad because the resolution is so high. Yeah. Because I – all my stuff was basically built for showing on a website at 72 dpi and when you're up in the 200s, it looks crappy.

Yeah, it looks like crap. Yeah. So fortunately, Lightroom, which is one of my favorite apps of all time, is really great with exporting everything. And you just set pixel dimensions and let it rip and it will just dump everything out.

So yeah, I – you know, I'm looking at my – I'm actually reading our show notes on my mini right now through – I'm not going to say who we're using right now because we're still in talks with our previous notes provider.

Right. And yeah, the display is still – it's like 120-some dpi, so it's gorgeous to read. I don't have a problem reading on it. So the only thing is I would really like LTE so I can leave my laptop at home and just take it out with me. Yeah, for me, I mean, I guess because I'm sitting generally in L.A. or Toronto or London or some other major metropolis, it's never been an issue for me.

I'm always able to find Wi-Fi somewhere, but you kind of go more out and about into the hinterlands than I do, so I can see why you need that. Yeah, I'm in my car in the badlands of Ohio where I need some cell signal. And I'm not going to upgrade my iPhone because – to get the pairing on the iPhone because I've got my grandfathered in unlimited data plan.

So I'm not going to give that up, period. Gotcha. So it's worth it to just get another device because I've got a Sprint MiFi or, yeah, MiFi that I use, which is – it's a 4G MiFi, but there's no Sprint 4G damn near anywhere. And their maps are liars. So I can dump that and save the $60 a month I spend on the MiFi and spend $30 and get the Apple.

Yeah, I've got a Verizon MiFi too, and I'm thinking about dumping that because I've had it for like six months and I've used it once. And I'll tell you what though. Here's the deal with it. Once a month, I find myself somewhere in the car and I get a crazy client call that is just like, we're screwed.

Help us. And I pull it out of my backpack. I fire it up. Pull up my laptop. I use it. I fix the problem. And my hourly is above what I pay per month for the MiFi. So one-hour client billable pays for the Wi-Fi for the whole month.

So it's a good hedge for me at least to keep some kind of Wi-Fi device with my laptop. But the thing is, there are some great SSH clients for the iPad that you can key up and have all of your SSH keys on the iPad.

So you can tell that into – tell that. I said that. You can SSH into any of your servers and do 99 percent of the things you need to do. If you're comfortable with like VI, which I am, I can do any text editing straight from the laptop.

And I've got Codalite, so I can actually use that to SFTP and to any server that I have a website on and do my work from an iPad. So it's a give and a take. But I think I can do 99.999 percent of everything I need to do from an iPad mini with LTE.

Yeah, which is pretty impressive. Yeah. I love the fucking future, man. I really do. So we talked a bit before about our lovely music apps, and I had totally forgot Twitter music was a thing.

Yeah. Apparently so did everybody else because they're killing it. I remember when they first announced it, and obviously my clients are all music clients, and I'm in the music industry. And I looked at it and went, well, this isn't really useful at all to my clients or me.

It's basically just for people that are on Twitter as end users. I've never even looked at it. I've never used it. I've completely forgotten that it existed. And I guess, yeah, everybody else did too. It's going away. And since you're in the music industry, if your guys don't use it, then what's the point?

Yeah. What is the point? There was never anything really that we could do with it. I did look through the documentation once going, huh, I should probably know about this. And then went, hmm, got nothing. Yeah, I mean, I did the same thing with Foursquare.

I always thought it would be really interesting if bands could check in at venues and do all that sort of thing. But it's just kind of useless. So there was nothing we could really do there unless they built out something specific for artists, and they obviously weren't going to do that. So there you go. What are you going to do?

But, I mean, I also, you know me and my feelings on Twitter anyways. It's like, whatever. Yeah, well, it is apparently with the teen crowd has surpassed Facebook. Yeah, don't we get this kind of – haven't we done these stories like five times already?

It feels like there's just a new study every couple of weeks. Well, yeah, and it flip-flops. Right. It's like, oh, this is what they're using this week. This is what they used last week. This is what they're using this week. Yeah. And these studies are useless. Exactly. I think they are too. The thing that the kids are doing is by the time you can study it, it's not a thing anymore.

Yeah. I mean, I think – aren't they all on Instagram instead now? Instead of Twitter? I don't even know what's going on anymore. No, but there's apparently – I didn't put this in the show notes, but apparently there's a very lucrative black market gun trade that's going on on Instagram. What? Yeah.

People are selling illegal guns on Instagram. Okay. I should dig that up. I'll try and find it and put it in the show notes. I think I just glanced – I saw it on TV and it was just – it was one of those peripheral things. I'm just like, what? I guess since Silk Road is shut down, everybody's gone to Instagram.

Yeah. I was like, what the hell? Wow. That's pretty crazy. Yeah. These studies come out all the time and who cares what the kids are doing? Kids – I remember being that age. I switched everything I liked every couple of weeks. Yeah. And, well, I guess that puts a fucking nail in that article.

I mean, plus, I mean, that entire generation doesn't want to pay for anything anyway, so who cares where they're at because you're not going to sell anything to them. And apparently they like to steal things and claim it as their own, like this little douchebag that did Mario.

Yeah, I mean, I appreciate what probably went into that. Hang on, hang on. Let's explain what it is first. Okay. You sent me this link and I looked at it and it's this kid who did a pixel-by-pixel recreation of Mario Brothers. Yes. Or Super Mario – I don't – I can't remember which one it was.

Super Mario Brothers. Super Mario Brothers. Which is a game I played incessantly for an entire summer with a bunch of friends once. And this is funny because you're the guy who doesn't like games. I know. I never got into Mario. I hated it. I hated Mario.

I did love this game. It's the only game I ever like really just lost my mind for. So this kid is a programming exercise. He's a teenager. He's young. Recreated the whole game and just like, here it is. And it's like there's this thing we have in the adult world, which you haven't quite gotten to yet, called intellectual property, copyrights and trademarks.

Yes. Just because you recreated – you looked at it and recreated it doesn't mean you own it. Or you actually even created it. You just rebuilt it. You copied it. I mean if – in the old days in computers with hardware and software, you had what was called white rooming where somebody who could look at something – and this was – they did it originally with the BIOS for PCs.

The preloader that loads the operating system. They would have an engineer look at the BIOS, write a white paper that said everything that it needed to do. Then they would give it to another engineer who never met the first engineer.

So there was this separation of church and state as it were. And then the other person had to re-engineer it from a spec. Yeah. That's how things used to go. So you'd have the separation and you could copy something legally. You didn't do this, kid. You looked at it.

You played it and you liked it and you rebuilt it and you stole it. Yeah. Yeah. And I like how he was basically kind of surprised when Nintendo was upset and said, can you please take this down? Yeah.

He's like, no, I don't think so because it's not fair to programmers and people who are trying to learn. I'm like, bullshit, kid. Because somebody spent a lot of time and a lot of money to make that thing. Yeah. You didn't. You did not. It was not your original idea. I mean, he said he spent like a couple weeks or months on just the physics of Mario's jump, just recreating it.

I'm like, well, how much time do you think it took them to create it and perfect it? You know? Yeah. It's ridiculous. It's a ridiculous way of looking at things. And yeah, he needs to take it down. You can't do that. If you put all that much effort into it, why didn't you make your own game? Seriously, this kid's obviously talented.

Exactly. I mean, he's really talented. Hey, I got an idea, kid. Make your own game and then you put it up on the web completely for free and you don't get paid anything for it. And we'll see how you feel about that in a couple of years. Yep. I mean, this is a gigantic bazillion dollar industry out there of people chasing down intellectual property rights and copyright laws, especially internationally.

I mean, I've recently just gotten horribly hooked on this show, Top Gear, the British one. Just recently? Just recently. Well, I guess about two months now. I've been watching it religiously. Oh, good tan. Never used to watch it. I know, it's awesome. But I just saw the episode where they went to China and they basically looked at every single Chinese built car and went, they completely ripped off every single bit of design from Ford for this one.

And Ford is trying to sue. You know, you can't do this. You can't take somebody else's thing, rebuild it, call it your own. You just can't. No. Well, I mean, I guess everybody does now. Yeah. If you're in China, apparently you can because that's always been a hotbed of law.

Yeah, it's a black hole of IP rights there. So, yeah. I mean, since they get all our money now and they to get things to steal from us, we need to send it to them to make it. Yeah. So they're trying to get in line with, you know, the global copyright laws and all that.

But I'm more impressed that you've got on board with Top Gear. I know. For somebody who doesn't give a crap about cars whatsoever, it's an amazingly fun TV show. I quite enjoy it. Yeah. I hate cars. I'm not a car guy. You know, I own the cheapest Ford that you could buy when I went into the lot.

I don't really care. But those guys are entertaining as hell. They make it fun. And just some of the stuff they come up with is great. Now, the American Top Gear is a travesty. I watched one. It was so boring and so stupid.

Apparently, Adam Carolla was up for that. That might have made it decent. But still, I don't think so. It's all about the British. I mean, I feel the same way about The Office. I know a lot of people love The U.S. Office. Probably don't even know there was a British one. The British one was genius. The U.S. one, it's a decent sitcom at best.

Yeah, exactly. And they tried to do it with Coupling, the best British comedy ever. Oh, that was a great show, too. I loved that show. Yeah, but not the U.S. one. They did two episodes in the U.S., and they literally did it line for line. And British humor doesn't work with an American accent.

I'm sorry. It doesn't. No, it doesn't. And that's where the American Top Gear fails is because they do – they try and recreate those characters. And those characters are characters because those people are awesome. Yeah. And you can't just put, like, a fat guy, skinny guy, and a fast guy into a series and think it's going to work.

No, no. It's a great show. So this is where copying fails. So this kid who copied Mario did a good copy. Yeah, he made an exact copy. Yes. So here's the lesson. Go make something original, people. Period. Yes. God, these people.

Oh, and speaking of that, shooting viral videos is not original anymore. God, please stop it. Living in Venice in Santa Monica, it's just everybody has their – they're out with their two or three buddies. They've got their cameras and they're shooting stuff. Get a job. Maybe that is their job. And get off my lawn.

Well, there was one viral video that I was interested in this week because this – in England, there was this guy who was dressed up as Predator doing, like, street art. And these douchebag kids videotaped themselves, like, basically pushing this guy off his pedestal and doing a faceplant.

And the internet reacted and they tracked this guy down. I think it was a Reddit thread and they tracked this guy down in a matter of hours and handed his info over to the police. Yeah, that's great. OK. This time it's great.

You know, 4chan has a history of finding people who do bad things to animals and to people and outing them. Yeah. But if you remember the Boston bombings and Reddit tried to crowdsource finding the bomber and it ruined this one guy's life. So, you know, there's a dark side to the crowd vigilante.

Reddit is not and should never be Interpol. I mean, that's a little bit ridiculous. Let's keep it to things like some guy pushes somebody over that's wearing a Predator outfit. Let's not leap in on it the next time we have a terrorist activity. Yeah. When you want to get serious, leave it to 4chan. Those guys are good.

Seriously. Yeah. You don't fuck with B. You don't. Um, yeah, it was it was it was an interesting thing that this kid got outed and they I haven't seen the follow up yet if he got prosecuted or anything. I mean, it's an assault charge at most.

It's a misdemeanor, probably. But yeah, it's a dick, you know, but shocking. I mean, you know, that's a kid. Teenage boys are going to be teenage boys. Some of them are fine. Most of them are idiots and do really stupid things. And I'm glad he's getting caught. I don't care. They came through the urn. That's fine.

I love the post, the Birmingham, like Birmingham Facebook post. Have you seen this prick? It's good stuff. Yep. Uh, OK, well, British journalism at least has a has a sense of humor. So, yes, I like that. Now, I have I have a bit to talk about with the Japanese.

I have a problem right now with the Japanese, with the Japanese. Well, there's been a couple of news stories about the Japanese. I saw that they apparently have given up on sex. Is that is that the one that you have a problem with? Well, definitely, if I go go visit Japan, I definitely have a problem with that one.

OK, that's the only reason to go. No. So now they've well, let's go back to Fukushima. OK, well, I've got a problem with that one. Apparently, I'm getting blasted with radiation here on the West Coast. Yeah. And there was another there's another article that I don't know.

I don't think I put it in here. There was a guy who was doing a trans-Pacific sailing trip. This guy's like circumnavigated the globe a couple of times. And before he said, oh, yeah, in the Pacific, all you had to do was drop your line and you'd get fish. And there were birds everywhere.

And now it's dead. The ocean is dead. And they were dodging like smokestacks from Japan that came out in the tsunami. And there's just no life out there right now. And it was very disturbing. I do need to put this in the show notes because this this article kind of made me very sad.

It totally bummed me out. I saw that, too. And that was like that was just like, all right. And a day for me. I got to go do something that makes me happy. Yeah. So you're a child of the 70s and the 80s. So you've seen Godzilla movies, right? Of course. So I think Fukushima, I think they're letting that happen on purpose and dumping all this radiation into the ocean to try and create Godzilla.

OK. You know, they're hoping they're like they're movie lovers. They're like, yes, we because that's what Godzilla came from. It was a I think it was a nuclear bomb accident that created him from a was a Gila monster. Right.

That was the original like the origin story. So I think they're trying to create Godzilla with Fukushima. That's why they're fucking up so bad, which is why somebody needs to step in and fix that. But that's a separate story. But now now they have successfully tested an asteroid blasting space cannon.

Really? Well, how do they successfully test it? I don't know how they test it. Was it a miniature model that blew apart like a tennis ball? They've got they've got a YouTube video with an animation. So maybe that was the test. It's they send up a satellite to an asteroid that is that is peacefully coexisted with us for eons and millennia.

And, you know, it's up there. It's got a stable orbit. They're going to go up there with a satellite. They're going to drop this little basically explosive charge with a four pound weight in it. It's going then they're going to take the satellite, put it behind the asteroid so it's protected.

Then they're going to explode this like launch vehicle that will shove a four pound bullet, basically a four pound bullet into the asteroid. Then they'll bring the satellite back around and then test the soil. Now, let's hope they're not trying to recreate Armageddon.

I love that movie. It is it is one of my favorite movies. It's very popcorn. I know it's very stupid. It's horrible. It's horrible. It's a terrible movie, but I love it. I love that movie. So I'm just worried that they're trying to recreate that now.

It's like, OK, Godzilla is not working. Can we get Bruce Willis on board for our next project? You know, this just seems like a horrible idea. I don't know why they want to do this, but OK. And I say I say Armageddon because once they once they hit the asteroid, it's going to change its trajectory and I don't know which way it's going to go.

Or it'll accidentally break it into 15 pieces, all of which will come shattering down on us. Yeah, it's thanks. It's like, come on, guys. Seriously, you know, how about how about you make it? Well, and the satellite is going to land on the asteroid and scoop up the stuff.

Why don't you just put a fucking shovel on the on the satellite and when it lands, it digs. How about we do that? Can we try that instead of trying to shoot it? Why do we start with the explosives, people? Yeah, seriously, just just buy a shovel.

They're like 10 bucks at Home Depot. Stick it on an arm and scoop like, you know, anybody else would. Oh, God, these fucking people. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. Doesn't mean you should. And I think you guys get some other shit to be worried about right now.

Stop fucking around with space. Yeah. Yeah. Like, stop pouring shit into the water. Oh, man. So the other the other big kerfuffle has been the the health care website. Yes. We have we have paid hundreds of millions of dollars.

Now, in your wildest imagination, say, back, you know, 15, 20 years ago, when when you and I were starting to actually build the first websites, could you have ever imagined the president apologizing for a site that you built not working? Nope.

That happened. That is I mean, that that's a story in and of itself that Obama goes on TV and says, dude, sorry, websites down. I felt his pain. I mean, how many times have I like been on the phone with a client saying, you know what?

A hundred percent uptime is completely unachievable. Things happen. And I go back. Remember that old IBM Super Bowl commercial? No, it's like where they they didn't account for the track. Like we ran the Super Bowl ad and then the website went down. It's like, well, where's the web designer?

Oh, he's snowboarding. But hundreds of millions of dollars, the amount of money that one website for this website. But then, I mean, the article I found, which which will be in the show notes, is about the congressional testimony about the website.

And, you know, as much as I've always said, boy, it'd be sweet to get one of those government gigs where they just pay an insane amount of money for something that we'd get like 20 grand in the private sector to build. I would never want to work on this project. Oh, it sounds like the ultimate nightmare. No, it is.

It is just a red tape nightmare. Yeah. I mean, the thing had to do a lot of stuff, granted. And I'm sure that the government APIs are not like JSON and REST based. You know, you're dealing with like some crazy shit to talk to the IRS databases and feed, you know, Department of Health and all this stuff just to get the information to verify who these people are.

Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's a nightmare. But hundreds of millions of dollars. Seriously. Okay. That's it. You say that right there. I could hire every programmer that has been crapped out of a welfare mom in the past 300 years and hire them all.

Hey, we just hire that kid that made the game. Find like, say, some insurance company's website and say, hey, rebuild that for free. Yeah. Come on, dude. Line by line. Rebuild that. We'll get you some nachos and jolt. Just rock on with it. No, but this article, I encourage, I'm sure that we have quite a few programmers out there that listen to us.

And if you've ever had one of those days where you've been sat in a meeting or had the project manager, with little air quotes, come over to you and just spout words and you know they have no idea what they're talking about and it's just double talk and all that sort of stuff, you need to read this article because it's fucking hilarious.

The people that they sent to do the hearing are just kind of the glorified project managers and they're just throwing out terms. You can tell they have no idea what they're talking about. Just reading this made me both laugh and cry. Yep. Definitely. And we've got another story coming up in security about this as well, but it is a fuster cluck.

It is indeed. So glad I never got those government gigs. Definitely. No, I would never take a government gig, period. This is one of those things that comes back to all the crazy conspiracy theories and I've got a link later that I'm going to share about a serious group of conspiracy theorists because my mom freaked me out.

She's like, you're turning into one of those guys. And so then I went and found those guys so I could compare and contrast and see how far I've gone. Right. The government is not good enough to pull off any kind of real conspiracy because they can't even make a fucking website work.

Okay. Exactly. So let's just put a nail in that coffin. They can't take down two towers. You know, if you can't even put up a website. Let's just stick with that. Sorry, Mulder. Sorry, Scully. The truth ain't out there. The truth is much more boring than you would have imagined.

Yes, it's sadly extremely boring. It involves a lot of progress reports. So we talk a lot about quantified self and data tracking with walks and runs and all that crap.

And this week I found a really interesting one on Indiegogo. Okay. And this is one of those ones where I don't shit on something. Well, actually, you're the one that craps on everything. So this is it's called Angel, the first open sensor for health and fitness.

Okay. And they look. Is it really the first for open access? I suppose that is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, this is this is built for developers. Almost. You get once you have the unit, you can write any kind of software on top of it.

It's got Bluetooth. So if you have an app, you can write code against it. Right. They were looking for 100 grand. They got 233 so far with eight days left. So this will be live when you hear this episode. Hopefully, if you are fresh and get it when it's new and hot off the presses.

I like it. I like it a lot. It's they do different stuff. They do pulse your body temperature, blood oxygen level. It's not just like, you know, gyroscopic stuff that all the other ones do. Yeah. I mean, this looks pretty intense and pretty serious.

Yeah, I'm down with it. I mean, this is the kind of stuff that I said that maybe this this should be for. I'm a little surprised that that nobody else. I mean, a lot of people, a lot of companies are out of the gate quicker. You know, they'll be coming out with something that's that's just as involved. Probably not with the hacker capability, which is the one thing on this end where they're just letting anybody write, write whatever they want for it, which is kind of cool.

I like that. No, that's what that's what really got me interested in this one. And I have to thank Dr. Jonas Luster for the link on this one. Hat tip. It's I'm a fan. I didn't fund it because I'm broke. But when when when they come out, I'll sell some blood or semen and buy one.

Yeah, I definitely I'm definitely into this idea. I'm going to, you know, as per usual, I'll wait and see what other people think of it first. But if it's this is very integrated and does just about everything. And I love that. And I'd love to have one and be able to track all this stuff. It's pretty cool. I wonder I'm just going to tie this in with another bit of news that I saw this week.

I wonder if anybody's going to write an app to blow up Dick Cheney's heart. Oh, yeah, I saw that. My dad actually is the one. He's like, Dick Cheney is on TV, like asking people to not hack his pacemaker. I'm like, what? Yeah, that was a good story.

And as soon as I popped up this Kickstarter, because I hadn't looked at it before we started to record, I was like, hey, the Dick Cheney app. Yeah. Yeah. Give me give me a Pringles cannon. And blow that bastard up. Jesus. What a douche. He's like, if somebody was going to do that, they'd have done it while you were still in office.

Yeah. You are nothing now. You're a pissant. Go away. Maybe he's just worried about it. Maybe he's gotten karmic and he's worried about all the bad shit he did when he was vice president and coming back to haunt him. Of course you go for great gas mileage. That's all I got on this one.

All right, man. Sounds good. All right. Yo, seriously? Are you shitting me? I like loons. Looney Tunes. Project Loon, which I have just discovered this week from Google, which is I heard a little bit about the initiative of Google to bring internet to the people by balloon.

By balloon. Balloon. And I was a little befuddled, let's just say. And they started posting these videos and the views have gone way down since the first video posting, which talks about what Project Loon is.

And now they're getting into the deep tech of how it works and what it's going to look like. And they've rolled out tests in New Zealand to farmers, sheep farmers, of course, because it's New Zealand. I am amazingly hopeful that Google will be able to blanket the earth in the internet with balloons.

I think that they are well on their way. They've got solid tech. Yeah. And I think it's going to work. But the name is what got me. I mean, it is a loony-ass project. It is a loony-ass project. It is well-named. Granted, it is a play on balloon.

You know? Project Loon, balloon. But yeah, they put up these high-altitude weather balloons, basically, that have radio transmitters in them. And they steer them by moving them vertically into the different jet streams to go back and forth or whatever.

But I think what their plan is, is really to have a belt of them circling the globe at all times. Yeah. That would seem to be the plan. And this will provide us with our wireless internet everywhere. Or at least if you live in Africa or New Zealand, where the pilot project went into effect.

Yeah. And it worked. It worked. The guy was just like, oh, I've got the page. It is fast. I guess that was more Scottish than New Zealand. I know. I was about to say. That's the Scottish Highlands, I think. Oh, look at that little wee sheepy over there. Yeah.

It's cool. I mean, if this... And it does work. They've tested it. So it works. All right. Let's do it. It makes a lot more sense than putting up another satellite or something like that. Why not? Yeah. I'm down with it. Kudos. Granted, that just means that everything will still be going through Google.

Soup to nuts. But at this point, I give up. I give up. Yeah. You know what? If they let me see my cat videos and if I can do my work, that's all that matters anymore. It really does. I have a little Google comic that I found on a page that we'll be putting up on our Facebook and our Twitter shortly, which involves Google and avoiding them.

But yeah, we've got to kind of give up. Speaking of which, I found another article about Google, which at first I was getting really into. I was curious about it based on the title. The title is Google. Only Google can manage our SEO. Now, I thought this was going to be an article that was actually about search engine optimization and how it works with Google and how that's changed over the years.

And another big change is apparently coming. I've never dealt way deep into the SEO world because I know it's just it's a mess and it's confusing. I think you probably dealt with it a bit more than I did. My understanding of SEO, especially with Google at this point, is there really isn't anything you can do to game the system.

And if you game the system, they actually punish you for it. There's always a way to game the system. Yes. The trick is you just don't know about it. Every time they roll out an update, they just had an update recently that killed a bunch of content farms. And I think eHow took the biggest hit on this one.

Oh, man. Hang on. My computer is going wonky on me. See what happens when you talk about Google? I'm telling you, they're in my junk. Maybe your balloon is off schedule. Yeah. It caught a random updraft and I'm out of sync.

There's always been ways to game the system and that's why they keep doing updates to their algorithms and cutting out spammers who do content farms and crap like that. But they're SEO friendly. If you go and check out Matt Cutts, who is like their search engine evangelist, he posts videos all the time on YouTube about the best practices for white hat SEO people to follow.

And they're really good. I mean they're really good. He pulls back the covers as much as they can because they can't pull it back all the way because then that would give black hat the ways into the system. There's only so much that they can tell you.

But I was at the first Google spam – it was the blog spam summit but we just happened to do it at Google. And I had a good conversation with Matt about how to start cutting out some of the blog spam stuff. It's like you've got to cut off the financing and just do all this stuff.

And he was – he's a smart guy. So I'm really glad that he's the guy that's out front talking to people about SEO. And he's – I mean just check out the videos. I'll actually throw in a link in the show notes because if you do – if you have a website, you need to know this stuff.

It's basic stuff. But SEO is surprisingly simple. There's just a few things you have to do and if your content is good and it hits the keywords that it needs to hit, you will get found on Google. Just look at the stuff that I've done with our Grumpy Old Geek site.

We are completely clean. I called it brown hat SEO before but it actually works and we rank in the top three search results for all of our episode titles. So you can be a good participant in the net community by just doing – just following the rules.

If you follow the rules and your stuff is interesting, you're fine. I've always felt that way with all my clients. I've never tried to game systems. I've never tried to play the games even though I've been asked to. I've always told them what we're doing is fine. We're done. We're good. So this article goes into a different area of it.

Yeah. This article wasn't really what it's titled. Yeah, this is about tying Google Plus profiles to blogs and it's what we did at Technorati back in the day. It's blog claiming. You claim a blog which means that you are the author of that blog and then we tie it together and then you have a personality associated with the blog.

So Google is 10 years behind what we did at Technorati. Good for them. But they're trying to tie it in with Google Plus. So your Google Plus profile ties in with your blog. So when the search results come up, you get your profile with it. We used to do that with the author MetaTags and RSS.

This is old news actually. But they're just trying to give Google Plus some juice. Which I wish they would just stop. Google Plus is dead. It's been dead for a year and a half. Let it go. See, I'm still hopeful. I'm hopeful. Wife of Rudy Jashon, Casey McKinnon, actually did a – she took one of my posts from Facebook.

Sorry about the dog barking. Took one of my posts from Facebook, posted it on her Google Plus account and tagged me on it. So I saw that she posted it. And she got like over 1,000 pluses or plus ones or whatever they do on Google Plus. So there are people that are still using Google Plus if she's getting that many upvotes as it were to use a Reddit-ism.

And there's a lot of content. Every time I go, I can just leave the window open and content scrolls by. People are posting. I just don't know if they're consuming. That's the big thing. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I haven't even logged into my Google Plus account in probably two months. I go in every now and – I mean I post our shows there and stuff and the photography stuff there is great.

I love going and seeing all the photography and there's some cool stories that come through there. But for most of the stuff, I've been getting a lot more use out of Twitter lately just for finding cool stuff. Like I mentioned before with that Safari update, I mocked it before.

And the thing that you were talking about with the Twitter links that show up in the new Safari, it's surprisingly useful. I found it amazingly useful. Okay. And here's a pro tip. Pro tip. In Safari on iOS, on the new one, if you're using Safari on the desktop, when you're in the view that shows all of your pages, like if you click the little pages view,

if you swipe up at the bottom of the screen, it will show all the tabs that you have open on your desktop version of Safari. That's pretty fancy. It's really cool. I found it by accident. It wasn't in any of the tips. I just found it and I'm like, oh, cool.

So now if I'm looking at something on the desktop, I can just swipe over to it. I mean I knew I could do that from the desktop for stuff that I had open on my iPhone. But I didn't know it went the other way around or how to get to it. So it's pretty cool that that integration happens.

Very cool. So yeah, all this is blog claiming and it's – And Google Plus attempts to bolster and build it up. Yeah. And you know what? It probably behooves you if you have a blog to tie it to your Google Plus account because I've noticed over the years that anytime that you do something that Google wants you to do, you rank higher.

They treat you well. Yes. You rank higher. Yes, that's very true. Because my blog – I mean way back in the day but right when Google AdSense came out, I was not ranking in Google. I got an AdSense account and I put banners on my site. Instantly, they started to index me more and then I got into the top search results for my blog.

So anything that gets them to index you more and gives you preferential treatment – You want that. It behooves you to do that. Yes. We don't want any of your Deutsche Markies. Oh, wait. We do? We want your Deutsche Markies? Yeah. That's Google for you. Welcome to this week in shit we put on our computers.

So I look at my computer at night a lot. I read emails and browse the web and look at cat photos and things like that. And you may notice that you don't sleep that well when you're looking at your computer late at night or have a harder time getting to sleep. Yeah, definitely. Common problem happens to everybody because the blue light, the blue wavelengths, break down the melatonin in your system, which makes it harder to fall asleep, period.

So I've got an app called Flux, which it checks your location, finds out when sunset is, and then changes the color temperature of your monitor to be more in tune with the evening tone range.

It takes out the blue. It basically takes out the blue, yes. It takes out the blue so you don't get the blues. That's pretty cool. I've been using this for years, and it makes all the difference in the world. And it's soothing. It's really soothing.

During the day, you want to have your full color monitor and all that, especially if you're editing artwork or photos. But in the evening, most people aren't doing that. And you can turn it off. You can pause it and all that stuff. It's not like set in stone. But if you're just browsing and using your computer like you would normally use it, it is a great app, and it will definitely let you get to sleep easier.

So there are Mac, PC, and Linux versions. Indeed. I'm going to be installing this and trying this out, particularly, I mean, you've been to my place upstairs. It gets an awful lot of sunlight during the day. So I'd like anything that kind of does this adjustment. So it's very cool. Yeah.

Awesome. Now, my question is, is it the same with iPads? They have an iPad and iPhone version. I see. But you have to jailbreak. Yep. You have to jailbreak. Because you can't mess with that kind of stuff. The Apple overlords will not let you get that deep into mods.

I'm sure on Android, it probably works great. Probably, yeah. It's a shame. Because I've discovered that by nighttime, unless I actually am still doing some serious, serious work, I'm not on my computer anymore. I'm actually just on the pad downstairs, so. Okay. Well, swipe up and jump the brightness down.

Exactly. Yep. I'm already doing that, so. Yeah. That would be a nice feature if, like, that's one of the things with the iOS stuff. I wish I could say, I'm home now. Do this stuff, you know? Yeah. You can do that for reminders, but you can't do any system level, like, hacks like that.

Yeah. Because you'd be like, okay. Can't do a batch file. Yeah. I mean, it's got auto brightness, but that works for crap. We all know that. So, it'd be just nice if it'd say, okay, sun's down, lower the brightness. And every 15 minutes after the sun goes down, lower it completely.

And if the room is completely dark, turn the brightness all the way down. It would just be nice. So, on another Mac-related thing, well, I guess Flux is not Mac-related, but I use it on my Mac. This is definitely a Mac-only thing, and I use it constantly.

And if you have a Mac, especially a laptop, this works really good on a laptop. I have it on my desktop, too. But more importantly on the laptop, it's called iStat Menus. They're up to version 4. It just gives you a ton of sensor data in your Finder menu bar.

More things than you could ever want to know. Yeah. But it's got – the cool things are it's got CPU usage, it's got memory usage, it's got network usage, and it's got fan speed. Those are the main things that I use it for.

Yeah. Because in the old days, like, the fan was this black hole. The fan would just go on. I've got an Air now, so the fan never goes on because it's the most amazing laptop ever created by the hand of man. Or the hand of Jobs.

Or Ives. We'll go with Ives. Okay. But it just gives you introspection so you can see if something has taken up all your resources without having to open activity monitor. It's a couple bucks. It's like – it's under 20 bucks. Just get it. Get it. You'll use it forever.

You'll love it. I even use it, and I'm not a total gearhead. I like it. Yeah. Cool. So we talked at the very beginning about the destruction of journalism and how stupid everything is. And one of my least favorite sites ever made is BuzzFeed and how they – they're just taking over the web.

Them and – what's that other one called? Upstream or whatever the hell. Upworthy. Upworthy. Upworthy. If I see another fucking ad for Upworthy, I'm going to shoot myself in the face. Can't stand BuzzFeed. But the one thing that it is good for, numbered lists. Sometimes numbered lists are good.

I found 19 mind-blowing tricks every iPhone user must know. And I didn't know half of these, and some of these are great. So for once, I'm going to say go to BuzzFeed. Check out the link. The best tip of all, if you put your phone on airplane mode, it will charge twice as fast. That is the best one.

Who the hell knew that? Apparently, BuzzFeed and their listicle department figured it out. Apparently so. I mean, that is just amazing. Most of these are really good. Like we can have – you can take selfies using the remote on your earbuds. Hey, every girl on Instagram. I mean, a lot of these are known, but I didn't know a bunch of these.

Yeah. A lot of them are standard stuff. But there are like four or five of there that really are like deep dive tricks. So it's worth going to check out. If you have an iDevice, just go read the list. It will take you five minutes, and you'll learn something probably. Probably.

Surprisingly. Surprisingly so. Yeah, this is actually a pretty good list. And number 11 just relates to what we were talking about. Invert your colors for better nighttime browsing. Yeah, I use that as a practical – like a prank. But remember like a couple episodes ago, like I do that when people leave their phones off and they come back and they'll be like, what?

So yeah, definitely worth checking out. Totally cool. And then I saw another article again about – well, obviously this is – you couldn't get away from Apple in the news this week because of everything that was going on. This was an op-ed about if tablets are replacing computers, why doesn't the iPad have a keyboard?

It does. It's on the screen. It does. It's built in. That's exactly my thought as well. I don't expect them to have one. You can use any Bluetooth one. They're just not going to do the ugly design that comes with having one built into it or snapping into a case or whatever the hell they do with the Surface. So this is kind of a non-article.

But the takeaway I got from it, which is a really interesting paragraph, and I wanted to get your thoughts on it because this is certainly where I'm at in terms of switching around between devices. Quote, people use computers for work, smartphones for communication, and tablets for entertainment when they're on an airplane, on the toilet, which is gross, or relaxing on the couch.

If you're using a touchscreen device, don't take it into the toilet with you. Some may also use tablets in mobile work environments like a doctor's office or an Apple store, but rarely, if ever, for word processing or while sitting at a desk. That's me 100%. I think you are probably more on the cutting edge of doing more stuff with your tablet.

Well, yeah. I mean, I already talked about it this episode. So I definitely would like to be able to do more stuff with it. And the keyboard is a little bit of a limitation, but you can use any Bluetooth keyboard with an iPad. And as far as the toilet, when Steve Jobs went, rest his soul, when he came out with the iPad, I said it should have been called the iPood because everybody's going to be using it on the crapper.

Pretty much, yes. So yeah, I mean, it's a decent article. It misses the mark in several spots. But I still think from the crowd that I run with, people are taking their laptops less on trips.

Yeah. And they're taking their iPads more. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I can see that if I didn't have to do any real work. I'm totally comfortable using my tablet now for all kind of email communication and all that sort of stuff. But if I got to get into a site and do something, I'm not as advanced as you are with that yet.

Maybe I'll get there. I don't know. Check out Coda Lite. Okay. Because Coda is the IDE that I use for all my web stuff for building sites. It's great. It's from Panic, panic.com slash Coda. And it's top notch. I used to use like all these crazy ones.

But I have standardized on Coda now. It's great. But they have Coda Lite, which is I think a 995 iPad app that you can do all the stuff that you would do on any IDE with any website.

It does SFTP, does SSH, does the whole nine yards, does Preview. It's great. Check it out. I will have to check out the Lite. I'm using Coda on the actual Mac desktop, but not on my tablet yet. So we'll see how that goes. Yeah. So I've got an iPhone app, which I'm going to not recommend anybody buy.

This was making the rounds this week. It's called SpimeySat. And it takes all of the publicly available satellite data for satellites. As opposed to. Yeah. And if a satellite is overhead that can take a picture of you, it will send you an alert on your phone.

And apparently there are only. What are you going to do? You get the alert and you fucking run for the nearest store? This is dumb. Well, it's not like you're in a terrorist camp and everybody goes inside and hides the AKs. I got to put on my tinfoil hat now. Exactly. It's like, oh, dear. And I'm in Chicago right now.

So you'd think that there would be lots of satellites coming over Chicago. Apparently there are only three satellites from Italy that can spy on me. And I get notified from them every day. It's $1.99, I believe. But it tells you what the satellites are, when they were launched, what they can do.

What the resolution is, blah, blah, blah. That's actually pretty interesting. But I could probably Google that. I mean, I wouldn't know in real time when they're overhead. But who cares? What do you have? Now, if we had, you know, like the NSA satellites that said, you know, go run, hide and grab your cheeks and head for the mountains, that would be worth $1.99.

But I'd even be okay with an app that just told me when the Google camera vans are rolling around so I could run outside and, you know, wear like a Yahoo rules shirt or something. You want to go LARPing when they come by. That's all it is. I know you. You've got your closet LARPing gear ready to go.

That's right. LARPing for the uninitiated is live action role play. Which means you're a nerd. Yes. It's not a good thing. Yeah. So, uh, one other thing I've noticed and, oh God, I, some, you know, I, I just hate the social.

Whoa. You hate the social. I'm getting another, I have the sound down. Why am I hearing a commercial again? Ad blocker is not doing a good job. Oh, well, I'm not saying I'm so. Okay. Hold on a second. Okay. Where do you go from there? Wait, I don't even know where it's coming from.

Would you turn that damn thing off already? Skype is giving you a commercial? Skype is running an audio, a video commercial with audio. I had to go over and turn it off. Oh, a fucking call recorder keeps crapping out. How fucked up is that shit?

I might keep that in now. Hey, if you're using free Skype and you're in the middle of a, of a voice call, it'll run a video ad with audio now. This is the first time it's ever happened on any of our calls. Oh yeah, that's new. That is brand new. Well, you don't pay for Skype, right?

No, I'm just using the freebie. Okay. So I, I'm, I'm a pro user because I need to, to be able to. Yeah. Cause you've been doing the conferencing for when we've had the three ways and all that. Yeah. Well, yeah. When we have guests on, I need to pay for it. So you, you are a cheap ass apparently. And, uh, that's what happens when you're a cheap ass.

You get ads. There you go. Well, I'm going to leave all that in. So everybody knows now free version of Skype now runs a video and audio ads in the middle of your calls. Okay. Now let's get back to where, let's get back to something else that annoys the hell out of me. Uh, I don't know if you've noticed if these have scripted into your Facebook stream yet or anything like that, but there's this new app out there, uh, called bit strips and they're starting to appear everywhere.

And all it lets you do is it's basically an ad that kind of does a, do you remember like the, the Daria, uh, animated show that was on MTV, I believe. Yes, I do remember Daria. It's a very similar looking animated style, um, from what I can tell. And you can basically make your own little comic strips and then post them on your Facebook stream or Twitter.

Yeah. The first one I saw came from, uh, my friend James Chan in Singapore and it was a picture of him and his girlfriend doing something silly and had some very uncomfortable dialogue in the thought bubbles. And I'm like, what the hell is that? And then last night I'm sitting here, uh, I, I'm recording this at combustion manor, uh, from our former guest, Mike Vinicor's place who just got the new Tron pinball and we were playing last night and he's like, what the hell is this bit strip thing in the middle of our game?

And I'm like, what are you talking about? And he showed it to me and I'm like, oh, that's that thing. And yeah, it's, they're stupid as shit. A friend of mine asked me what the hell they were. Like, I think it was three days ago and I hadn't even heard of it yet. So I Googled it, but like literally within an hour after that, all of a sudden I saw like five show up in my Facebook speed.

So this is going to be super massively popular for the next month and then we'll never see it again. God, let's hope it's not a month. I can't take a month of this. Oh, it'll be a month because we're at the bleeding edge right now. People are just starting to find it. So then it'll have to go mass, which means all the people that you normally ignore in your Facebook feed that are still your friends for whatever reason, like all your high school friends and all that sort of stuff will discover it.

And then you're going to be hit with that blitz. And then all of a sudden everybody will go, huh? Okay. That's not that fun anymore. Yeah. So in four months, my mom will send me one of me and her. That's how it works. Exactly. That is the evolution of anything that appears on the web these days. So this is, this is why kids do not be an early adopter.

No, don't never be an early adopter. Cause you'll be burned out by the time everybody else gets around to it. God. All right. Bit strips soon to be. Well, who knows? They'll probably make a billion dollars. Oh yeah. They'll get bought by Facebook. I know they're going to get bought by Facebook and make a billion dollars and I'll just be annoyed as all hell about it.

Okay. Moving on. So this week I grabbed, uh, when I, when I mentioned the, uh, my amateur audible free credit, I went back and got the ocean at the end of the lane, the new book by Neil Gaiman.

And Neil Gaiman is one of my favorite authors. I believe yours as well. I'm a big fan. Yes. Not, not a fan of his choice in wives, but I like his books. This is why we'll never have him on the show. Thank you very much. You motherfucker. Um, the ocean at the end of the lane is, I don't know if it's a young adult novel, but it is adorable.

Like all of Neil Gaiman stuff, terrifying in parts, novel in others. It's, it's a great, it's a great book. It's a great read. It's short. It's only like five and a half hours on audible and he reads it, which is great because he's an amazing reader. So highly recommend it.

Cool. 100%. Um, I picked up a book this week too. Uh, Morrissey of the Smith's fame has released an autobiography, which is getting an awful lot of press, uh, because it's, well, I mean, it's Morrissey and he's always, he always gets press. Uh, he's always controversial. Um, the thing I have an issue with is I actually had to steal this book and this is why, uh, people really need to figure out new media.

You cannot release a book, have it only be out in the UK and then have press everywhere about it. I would have bought it. I would have liked to have bought it. I figure I probably will buy it when it comes out because I'm starting to feel a little bit guilty about not buying it. But I basically had to bit torrent it because you could not purchase it here.

Morrissey rides a cock horse. I've actually really enjoyed the book so far. Um, if you like his, his writing, which basically reads like novels anyways, his music, um, you're going to like his book. So it's good so far. Okay, cool. I, I, the kerfuffle I saw was the, the, I mean, it's Morrissey.

Yeah. So he's, you know, our generation, but it came out on Penguin Classics, which is the same imprint that comes out with the Seneca books that I read. Um, yeah, that, that was apparently quite the big deal, which also made me laugh because that, that, that just reminds me of the old days of, of doing the music industry, uh, online when, when record labels would want to have these fantastic sites.

Um, and I was just like, you realize that people care about the artists, not the label and nobody will ever give a shit about EMI or follow EMI because they, you have a bunch of artists that they don't like you. They like this. They don't care what it's on. Um, I feel the same way. I think publishers should be happy that people are buying a book, not worrying about what the imprint is.

Exactly. Yeah. Especially since I just stole it. Stole? You stole it? I stole it, man. I stole it. What the hell? Don't be axing me about that. Don't be axing. Yeah. But, uh, Morrissey's got a book. You just can't buy it yet. Unless you're in the UK. Morrissey.

I love Morrissey. I love Morrissey. Security! Ha! I'm going to read all of these in about two minutes. Okay, two minutes, go. This week in security, we are behind schedule. So let's get this done quick. This weekend is the Stop Watching Us rally against NSA spying.

Hopefully by the time you've heard this, uh, it will have started because we're going to release it on Saturday and it starts Saturday at noon Eastern time. Uh, yeah, it's good. We're going to put a link to the video in the show notes. Go watch it. It's great. It's got actual, you know, smart people who, uh, are on our side.

So, yeah, it's a good read. Listen or watch, whatever. Get involved. You'll get to the right media at some point there. Um, so, so yeah, mom, I, uh, I'm not the only one with the tinfoil hat. Shut up. Next up, DARPA will give you $2 million to build a hacker-proof defense, uh, to build hacker-proof defense software.

They're looking for an, uh, basically an, uh, AI that is smarter than a sysadmin. And they will pay you $2 million if you can make it. Yep. And the NSA spies on France. Go figure. Why? And Germany, apparently. Yeah. And, and also this week, uh, security checks now start before you fly, which this, this, this has been going on forever.

This is what generated the no-fly list back in the day. So this is not news. It's just now you know about it. Get over it. And VPN providers are starting to shut down after the lava bit kerfuffle. Yeah. Uh, meaning that once you get the letter from the NSA, you're, you're screwed.

You have to hand over your cryptography keys and anybody, and they can listen in to all your users' traffic if you don't have back doors in to allow pen traps and, uh, that kind of thing. So, uh, VPNs now off limits. So roll your own kids.

And that is this week in security. Well done, man. Well under two minutes. Although you probably could have just done, uh, go to stop watching us. Check out the video. Otherwise we're all fucked. Perfect. I got a, uh, a link from my old friend, Matt Hartley, who is the host of the Linux action show on the, uh, Jupiter broadcasting network.

Okay. And he, he, we were friends back in the locker gnome days. He was one of our, one of our writers, a great guy, very funny, very cool. And, uh, he sent me a link to every fucking website.com, which I was in tears. Uh, website.

I, I, I lost my shit. I just started laughing. It's absolutely hilarious. Um, it's so true. Yeah. Just go check out the site. If you're a web, if you're a builder, check it out. If you're a consumer, it might not be as funny, but it, it, it is the stereotypical website with banner ads and links and, and just, it states what they're there for, for no apparent reason.

It just go check it out. Seriously. I'm seriously tempted to actually send this to a client at some point when they're asking for a redesign. I, oh, it would just be awesome. Yeah. TOS bitches. TOS bitches. Oh, so the other, the other thing I got is the headphones project, which was cute.

It's a little Tumblr blog where this chick goes around asking people what they have on their headphones. It's, you know, some emo hipster bullshit that is kind of cute. Yeah. Nobody, nobody's really listening to podcasts, so that would be nice. I know it would have been awesome if one of them was listening to grumpy old geeks.

Yeah. So if you see some chick that's bothering you, like waving her arms, like trying to get your attention, uh, tell her you're listening to grumpy old geeks, please. And, uh, honest slogans was another one that came up this week, which is, uh, it's, it's corporate logos with what the actual title should be.

Like that movie, that Dustin Hoffman movie from my favorite was Pepsi. Uh, we don't have Coke. Is Pepsi okay? I think the Pepsi, is Pepsi okay? It's it, they're fun. There's a ton of them. You can spend 20 minutes. It'll, it'll, it'll rock your socks.

It's very funny. If you need a laugh, hit it up. Now my last one is one of the best Twitter accounts I've ever seen. It's called brilliant ads and it's twitter.com slash brilliant underscore ads. They curate a giant archive of some of the best advertisement in the world.

And I have every day, there's something new on there that makes me go, damn, that's clever, period. So check out brilliant ads. I mean, it's, it's one of the only things Twitter is good for. So I don't think they have a website, but if they do just go to the website and skip Twitter, uh, that's, that's my rundown for the week.

There's just a, I came across a bunch of good stuff. So check them out. Kill some time. And brain cells. Yep. Go for it. Yeah. Candy, candy, candy, candy. So my buddy, uh, Steve Isaacs, who I used to work with at this little agency called BLT, uh, started a video show on YouTube.

He's, he's one of those people who's trying to get rich off YouTube that you poo poo, poo so often. Well, um, let me know if he makes it. It's a cool concept because I mean, he's a, he rides bikes in LA with all the other hipster bikers and does all that shit, which drives me nuts.

But he has a cool take on it. It's called sweet ride USA. And what he's doing is he finds really cool places that have pastries and donuts and desserts. It's, it's, it's called, that's the sweet in the sweet ride. Yeah. And they map a route that takes them.

It's, it's almost, it's a historical tour of Los Angeles, but it also burns exactly as many calories as the desserts that they eat. Right. So it's cool. I like it. Uh, it's, it's very professionally shot.

Steve's great. Steve used to be an MTV VJ back in the day. So he's got, he, he knows how to handle himself on camera and it's a, it's a great little show and I wish him all the best and check it out. It's sweet ride USA.com. Excellent. Um, I've got, uh, I've always had a problem with Russell brand.

I've never been a big fan. I've never found him particularly funny. Um, I've never really liked him as a person. However, this is doing the rounds everywhere. Uh, it's gone beyond viral. So I'm sure you've all seen it and heard it by now. But in case you haven't news night, uh, Jeremy Paxson, uh, on the BBC, this is a really like respected, I can think of it as, uh, you know, the UK's, uh, 60 minutes, a very respected news program, did an interview with Russell brand who has apparently decided to become a crusader

against, uh, the 1% and everything that's wrong in the world right now. Which I fully support because he actually does an amazing job in this interview, even though the, uh, Jeremy Paxson is just not taking him seriously at all, regardless of how serious the topic is and how well he's stating his point.

Yeah, it's an amazing video. I thought it was awesome. I really did. Uh, he's eloquent. He's well, well-spoken and is, he doesn't offer any solutions up, but he also says he doesn't offer any solutions up because he's in an interview in a hotel room.

So, you know, kudos on that point, but it's, it's a really good 10 minutes. Um, check it out and I did 100% on board. Go, go Russell, go Russell on this one. I mean, I'd love to see the followup and who knows?

I, I, I, I just, it's something that's getting people interested and it's starting to blow up everywhere and this is important stuff and I don't care who's saying it as long as they say it well. God, can you imagine in 10 years, the teenagers are going to be wearing Russell brand, like Che Guevara esque t-shirts?

Like he's the head of the revolution. Dude, somebody needs to make those right now. Let's Kickstarter it. Let's Kickstarter them. I mean, you'd sell tons of them right now. Awesome. All right. Who's this asshole? I, I, I mentioned the conspiracy theory nuts before and I just want to mention this real quick.

It is facebook.com slash watch 2014. It is conspiracy theory. It's just called conspiracy watch. And these guys post all day long. They talk about the new world order, the Brandenburg group, all of this stuff.

Right. That is all the tin hat stuff that's out there. And they have 1.4 million likes with 5.8 million people talking about them. So this is not the, the little tiny sliver.

This is, this is a lot of people. There's a lot of dumb people out there. The thing is, half of it ring, this is, this is where you get into that gray area with conspiracy versus truth. You don't know if they're, if they're wrong or not, because some of the stuff, you know, might be a little too close to truth.

But I don't know. I don't know. It's, it's just one of those, make your own decision. Right. Go check it out. Facebook.com slash slash watch 2014. It's, uh, it'll be interesting.

That's all I got to say. Yeah. It's, you know, I followed anonymous on Facebook for a while and then I had to actually cut that out too. And they're way more reputable than these guys, but hey, go for it. Check it out. Make your own decision. Absolutely. All right, Jason.

Well, we're kind of rushing at the end because you've got to go off to a big bad-ass job interview. So good luck to you. I don't have a job interview. I have a conference call with a client. Oh God, those are horrible. Nevermind. Sorry. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. I got to run. Uh, so thank you for tuning in this week and, uh, please, if you can drop us a star or five on, on, uh, iTunes, we'd really, really appreciate it and check out our Facebook page, even though I don't like Facebook and, or our Twitter account, even though I don't like Twitter.

Yeah. Uh, check out all the social media that we hate and follow us there because we, we, we do update it for you, the listener. Yes, we do. And, uh, tell a friend and, uh, we'll see you all next week. Yeah. And you'll be from London. Uh, no, no, we're going to record early because, uh, I'll be actually traveling on the day that we normally record.

But, uh, the, the podcast after that, we're, we will find a way and I will record one from the UK, assuming the NSA lets us. And if you're in Wyoming, download the damn show. That's right. Although if you're in Wyoming and you're listening to this, then you already have. So that point is moot.

Fucking logic. Shit. Damn it. Keep up with the grumpy old geeks on the web at grumpy old geeks.com on Facebook at facebook.com slash grumpy old geeks. Or email them at podcast at grumpy old geeks.com.

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