38: No real limits of any kind apply here...

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

Grumpy Old Geeks, episode 38. I am Jason. And I'm Brian. How are you feeling this morning, Jason? Oh, I'm feeling okay. I noticed some fun stuff happening on the social networks last night, because I usually shut it down around 7 or 8 o'clock at night, because I've been online all fucking day. I took a little gander right before I went to bed. Explosion.

Yeah, I got in kind of a little pissing match with Matt Mullenweg over the, what would you call that, the wisdom of forcing auto-updates for WordPress 3.8 onto the masses. And yeah, I'd had a cocktail or two.

Yeah, I noticed. I tried to get Matt on the show to defend his position, but he mysteriously stopped tweeting after I invited him. So Matt will not be joining us today. My point was that forcing updates on people who are running legacy versions of WordPress is fundamentally a bad idea.

Yeah, you can't force people to do that. And people have built custom stuff. I mean, I was a little worried about that myself when they announced that auto-updates would be a feature, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, well, what about, how am I going to find out if something breaks other than it breaking? Yeah. That's in like millions of small businesses use WordPress and it's Christmas to their high sales time of year.

So if you force an update on people and it breaks their livelihood, that's a bad user experience in my book. And he was saying that it's better for the security and safety of the internet as a whole if WordPress patches itself along the way. And I'm like, well, no, not at all. I mean, it's an opt-in feature. Yes. If my site is perfectly tuned and you want to do point releases that are

security fixes, but 3.8 has a huge feature set in it with the whole new MP6 theme, which is an admin theme that I've been pushing forever. I love it. And I'm glad it's baked into it now, but it's going to change a lot of things. And there's a lot of plugins out there and a lot of really bad code written on top of WordPress because WordPress is in itself really bad code. Yeah, I said it.

Well, I was about to say it'd be a lot better for the security and feasibility of the internet at large if nobody used WordPress. Yeah, this is true. Let's just start there. I mean, it's software by committee. And if you look at the source code for WordPress, it's pea soup. I mean, it's a mess.

Yeah. And it's a monster. It's a monster. And you can't really work your way through it. It's just bad, bad, bad. Yeah. I mean, it's trying to do too many damn things. And, you know, but it's free. It's free and everybody thinks it's easy.

Yeah, it's not free. I get paid a goodly sum to work on WordPress. So when people say, let's use WordPress because it's free, I'm like, okay, I'm not free. And all of the paid plugins that we have to use on all these sites aren't free. Because last night, I spent over $1,000 in professional plugins.

Right. So yeah, just because you get the tires for free, the car still costs money. But yeah, yeah, I did have some cocktails and I got up in Mullenweg's face a bit. So it was entertaining. I don't care. Well, maybe he'll decide to come on someday anyways. But, you know, we'll make sure it's not a drinking show.

Yeah. And most of the time I see Matt, we're always drinking. He's a cool guy. I like him. You know, I just, there are some things that just rub me the wrong way with their procedures, I guess. But, you know, he's done really well for himself. I applaud him for it. And I wish him all the best. But yeah, that just, no, no auto updates, forced auto updates.

Yeah, I completely disagree with that as a philosophy as well. You just can't do that to people. It's not fair. And you're right. I mean, the timing especially is absolutely horrible. It is the Christmas season. People don't really want to have to work, you know, in an overnight to fix something that they didn't even see coming.

And it launched a day early. It was supposed to come out today. Today is Friday the 13th. So they launched it on Thursday. And I've got a site launching today on WordPress. And I'm like, the last thing I need is a major upgrade the day I'm launching. And that comes back to something I've always said is like, it's a moving target. WordPress is a moving target. And you have to keep up with these things. But the day of launch, you've got a thousand other things on your plate.

You don't want to have to be dealing with, you know, that. So it, yeah, I might have been a little angsty too. Angsty and hoochie. That's always a good combination. Wasn't that a Tom Hanks movie? Angsty and hoochie? I think that was the porn version.

The porn version. Okay. Yeah. Anyways, there you go. So you guys are in a sriracha pinch. Well, they're calling it the srirachapocalypse. Yes, I saw that. And, you know, yeah, okay, it sucks. I feel really bad for this guy. And I also, I guess I feel bad for the neighbors. It must be bad enough that they actually decided to have to sue to try to get him to stop making it. I was just at the grocery store stocked full. People are not

running to the store and, you know, terrified, like, you know, earthquake and end of the world is coming. Scraping it off the shelves and buying 15,000 bottles each. This is another media fabrication because we have to make it sound a lot more interesting than it is. There's plenty of stuff around. I just bought four pounds of it yesterday.

There's plenty of this stuff around. It's not going anywhere. How much do you people really use anyways? One bottle should last you a couple months. You'll be fine. This will get sorted out. Chill the fuck out, everybody. How about restaurants? When you think about restaurants who use it often, I know it's a tempest in a teapot. But I will be sending some bottles of sriracha to my California friends for shits and giggles.

Yeah. It makes a good gag gift right now. That's for sure. It's not going anywhere. It'll be back. It'll be fine. We're not going to lose our sriracha. I think, and to be honest, I have one of the bigger bottles. And I go through one bottle every two months. So for me, it's a big deal.

You use quite a lot. I would say most people don't use that much. I mean, I love the stuff and I don't go through it that quickly. Well, it keeps me regular. Let's just say that. Okay. Understood. Understood. But no, this is as much of a panic in Los Angeles as I, what were the other stories that I heard so far this Christmas? No, around Thanksgiving, there was the great turkey scare that there weren't going to be enough turkeys that was reported on all news media. But I think pretty much everybody had a turkey, right? We're all good. Everything's cool.

You say so? Yeah. Well, there's so many damn vegans in LA. I don't think you need that many. Well, the folks that do eat turkeys got them. There was no great scare. There was a news report two days ago about, oh, there's a Christmas tree shortage. We may not all be able to get Christmas trees. Lots are fucking full of Christmas trees. The media needs to stop this bullshit. It's getting really fucking annoying.

That's what they do, man. Get over it. I know. That's all they do. It's, oh my God, we're going to have a, no, no. That's fucking load of shit. What we have is a journalism shortage, and that's not going away. That's true. That's true. So, a little bit more follow-up. The Beastie Boys are suing back, the GoldieBlox people.

Yeah. This is a lose-lose for the Beastie Boys at this point. I mean, I think that they've got, the vast majority of the online community is on their side, and actually, the good part about the story from that perspective is I think that people finally got a clear view of, like, what property rights mean, intellectual property rights, and, like, oh, well, the guy was dying, and on his deathbed said, don't ever use my songs for advertising. Well, that's kind of fucked up that these people did it.

On the negative side is this did exactly what GoldieBlox wanted it to do. Got them a shit ton of publicity. They went from a company that very few people knew about to a company that everyone knows about now. Yeah. Yeah. But they're suing for the profits from the song, you know, how much product they moved, which is a very hard-to-quantify number, I think.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's really hard. You cannot prove a single ad's effectiveness ever for anything. Yeah. We really can. We've worked in this industry all our lives. Have we ever been able to prove what our websites have actually done? Yeah. Give me the virality quotient on that, you know?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. There's no such beast. So we'll see how that turns out. But, you know, I give them props for – I was going to give them props for suing back, but you know what? I think this is one of those things where it's like dealing with trademark. If you have a registered trademark, you have to go after people who use your trademark. Let's go back to WordPress. WordPress is a trademarked entity. If you put WordPress in your URL, even though you sell WordPress types of services, they will send you a cease and

desist and make you change your URL. Same thing with Facebook. You can't use Facebook in the URL. Because if you have a registered trademark, you have to – what do you call it? You have to go after these people because otherwise you can lose your trademark. Yeah. It certainly gets diluted and you do have to protect yourself and your trademarks. Yeah, I agree with that. In a perfect world, the Beastie Boys wouldn't have had to turn around and sue and

just would have went, look, stop it. Knock it off. Yeah. I thought that's where we were at with this because there was, you know, the mutual letters saying, oh, GoldieBlox said, we're sorry. We didn't realize Adam was dead and didn't want us to use his song and they're like, yeah, whatever. Yeah.

But I thought it was done then. So it was a surprise to see them come back and sue. It's a little unclear as to who started the process. I mean, if you look at the – at who the defendants are, it's, you know, Island Def Jam, UMG Recordings, the publishing companies. I mean, Rick Rubin, the band itself. I mean, the band itself is involved, but this is also the record label coming in and saying, hey, hold on a second.

Oh, they see a payday here. Yeah. The record label sees that they're not getting money that they feel that they're owed. Well, they should be used to that by now. I know. That's why it's like, grab at any straw you can. This probably will be a fairly open and shut case. I mean, you know, they'll get their money, but it'll go on forever and it'll cost, you know, way more money than it should.

The lawyers will make all the money. And yeah, the lawyers will make all the money and it's perfectly timed in terms of, you know, GoldieBlox being out there for Christmas. And, you know, they're getting all the publicity that they want. And stunningly enough, I mean, from what I've seen looking around, it's – they're not exactly getting blasted anymore. And it just – it sucks. I mean, I hate – I hate to see crappy marketing like this work, but it did.

Yeah. It did for them. It's kind of like the Amazon with their drones. Yeah. The Amazon drone story was completely the exact same thing. It was a nothing story that was perfectly timed to make sure that everybody had Amazon on their mind. I know. They could have put out a press release saying, Amazon is going to be delivering packages by dolphin to the Fiji Islands. It would have the same effect, you know?

Exactly. Yes. You know what we should do? We should put out a press release saying, Grumpy Old Geeks will do a podcast from the moon. Yeah. Someday we will. Maybe. Could be. Could be. Could be. So the last bit of follow-up I have is, now apparently according to Google, you can download an entire copy of your Gmail and calendar data with their takeout service, which we've talked about on the show before.

I love their takeout service. Their takeout service. Yeah. Yeah. Guess what? I just went there today, right before the show, just to make sure that it worked. Doesn't work. Gmail is not there. You can get your calendar data. You can get 15 different vectors of crap that Google has on you, but Gmail is not one of them. So maybe they took it down because it was broken.

Nope. Nope. I just loaded the page. The ability to download your Gmail messages will be rolled out over the next month. Oh. So that's a rollout, which I get because Gmail's a beast. And you know, so that's cool. I mean, I love the fact that they're doing this. This is one of the first things that Google has ever done that I've been like, yay, Google. Yeah, that's good. I mean, you should be able to get this. Everybody, you should always be able to get your data. MySpace should have had it before

they went. Facebook should have it. You should be able to completely download a whole XML file of every update that you've ever done with the images encrypted within it and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Of course you can't do that, but you know, good. Good on you, Google. Excellent. Yeah. I mean, that was when I, when I built, uh, you okay there?

Yes. A little froggy there. All right. Even, even though, even though I'm a complete and utter hermit and like I'm barely coming to contact with people whatsoever, I have managed to catch a bit of a Christmas cold. Um, are you a vitamin D taker? I do take vitamin D. Take more.

And, and, oh, we can talk about the super, uh, vitamin C super dosing too, if you want to get into that, but, uh, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, a little, a little bit later. Okay. So, um, anyway, what I was saying was when I built blogrolling.com way back, I had three different vectors for people to get their links back out because I was kind of like a link cabinet, you know, people store their links and they displayed them on their blogs.

So I gave them an OPML option. I gave them an RSS option. I gave them a plain text option. Yeah. And everybody loved that. I'm like, look, I'm just, I'm, I'm a way station on your journey through the internet. Use my service as long as you want. But when you're done, it's your data, take it with you. Right.

And every, and it, we did this at Technorati. I mean, there's been almost every service I've ever worked at. It's been one of my like core tenants to make sure that the data that people give us, that they trust us with, they can take back whenever they want in, in a usable format.

Well, that's because you approach this from a fundamentally different philosophy than these siren servers do. You think it's your, it's their data. They think it's their data. Right. Well, yeah, because I am a good internet citizen as it were. And I, I build services that I want to use. You know, I don't build anything that I wouldn't use myself. Right. So when I, when it, it, the core design stages of these things, it's, you know, it, it's part of the

tenants that if we're doing something that's social and has people as part of the product, like JPEG magazine was, it's made by people. So, uh, and they're giving us, you know, photography that we can then use. They should be able to take it back, take the high-rise photos back and just in case their hard drive crashes and they need to get them back. Why not? Right. You know, and I wish Flickr was as easy as that because I've, there are services out there that I've had to use to go and

get all my, my photos and up and I haven't tried it recently because I, you know, they're a dying, dying beast no matter what anybody says. Um, it, it's always been ridiculously hard for me to get my photos back out of Flickr. Yeah. Um, I wish everybody would, would do what Google's doing and just make it super easy. I agree. It's, it's your data. Let, let us have it. So, or let them have it. Let them eat their data. Free the bits. Yes. Uh, so I have a bit of follow-up. I have finally

tried the honey at night thing. I've been doing it. Uh, I've been doing it every night since a Sunday night and it's now Friday. So I, you know, a good five days in a row now. Um, haven't really noticed too much of a change other than my sleeping patterns have shifted a little bit. I wake up later than I used to, but consistently at basically within the exact, within two or three minutes, the exact same time every single morning, which is interesting. Yeah. So, so how long is your,

is your, is your sleep block? Uh, it's increased. It's now, I was sleeping probably anywhere from six to seven hours a night and it's, it's pretty much right in at seven hours and 20 minutes. Interesting. Okay. Well, it has, it has increased. I mean, my problem was I would always wake up at the same time every night at about three in the morning. So I would get about four hours of sleep, wake up and be up for an hour. Right. And this comes back to the old thing where we, where, um, if you look at old literature, there was the, the first and second

sleeps where, you know, if you, we never slept, uh, a full eight hours chunk like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We did, we did two blocks. Um, but now I've noticed, I mean, it, it has helped me tremendously. Uh, and we're going to probably have Seth Roberts, the guy who came up with the blog post on the show, hopefully, uh, in January. Um, he's, uh, he's been really cool and I, I didn't know

this until I, I started, uh, talking to him via email. He's the guy that came up with the Shangri-La diet, which was this crazy diet where you basically slurp down a, uh, a big tub of, uh, olive oil every morning. It was, my mom did it for a while and she, she actually lost weight. Does it just kind of grease the wheels? Oh my God. But the problem for me, it was just so disgusting. I couldn't do it. Even you're supposed to hold your nose and just down it. Right. And I think I lasted

a week, but man, there was one morning where I forgot to hold my nose and I did it and I ended up just yakking for like 20 minutes before I went to work, which was not the way to start a day. Um, but he's, he's got a great blog. We'll link it in the show notes. Uh, we've, we've linked it before, but, uh, I noticed the honey thing. It's helped me tremendously and I'm not going back, um, in no, in any way, shape or form. Yeah, I'm definitely going to stick with it. I mean, I, like I said, I'm waiting for the main benefit that I I'm hoping that I'm going to get is the,

the not groggy thing for the first like half hour, hour I'm up, but, uh, we'll see if it comes. I mean, I, I've already, it's, I've noticed a difference. Are you doing a full tablespoon? Yeah. Okay, cool. Yeah. That's the one thing I jump out of bed now. I never used to be that way. I am not a morning person. I hate getting up. I will just sit there and find any excuse that I can to procrastinate in the mornings. And now I'm just like, Hey, time to get up. Let's

go. Yeah. So it's just, it's one of those hacks that, I mean, it might not work for everybody, but it's worked tremendously for me. Right. Yeah. It seems to be going well. So we'll see.

In the news. What did Riggs used to call it? Fieria? Fieria. We're recording now, by the way. Let's keep that. So, uh, did I put this thing in or did you, the taking photos interferes with memory? Uh, you must've, because you take photos all the time. Yeah. Um, probably. And we actually talked about this. I think it was, wasn't Clive Davis. Maybe it was Clive Davis. Um, stopped a concert one time when a fan stood up and took

a photo and it said, uh, by capturing the moment, you miss it entirely. Yeah, exactly. Um, but now there is studies that call it the photo taking impairment effect. Um, PTIE. That's a really terrible acronym. That's a horrible acronym. They're going to have to work on that one. Um, anyway, yes, uh, we'll, we'll link this in the show notes, but it, it, it, what it states is that when you're taking photos of an event that you're engaged in, you don't

remember it as well. Simple enough. It's, it's 100% true. It makes sense. Um, musicians, including Beyonce, Prince Bjork have all insisted photography bans at the performances claiming the cameras to track from the performance and you're obviously not paying attention to the show. Uh, I find it incredibly annoying at shows when it's just a sea of, well, it used to just be a sea of phones. Now people are bringing their fucking iPads to shows and holding up their iPads. I want to smack the crap out of them. Yeah, that's just stupid. But yeah,

it does. I mean, if you're, if you're, if you're, if you're not engaging, you're not going to remember it as well. This makes sense. Although the only drawback I see to the study is, wow, wouldn't Japan have like the worst memory of any country? Yeah, probably. Probably. So, uh, yeah, don't just don't do it. Um, enjoy the moment. Be present. Yeah. You know, take a picture. Sure. Take a picture and then move on and actually enjoy the whole thing.

I mean, I noticed this when I was, when I was shooting, uh, events in San Francisco and this is why Scott Beal and I ended up trading off, you know, after a while because you, you get home, you take, you see all these pictures. You're like, yeah, I was there, but I barely remember anything that happened. So it's, uh, yeah, I, people just need to enjoy the moment.

Keep you, keep your memories in your brain pocket instead of in your pocket pocket. Hmm. We'll see if that one catches on. Okay. So I've got a, an article here from Dave Weiner of script scripting.com fame, one of the earliest bloggers. And it's called learning to code will not make you rich. Now that, that, that aside, the point of the article is that instead of learning to code, you should learn

how to run a server. Yeah. And this is, this is one of those just like really stupid moments where I'm like, Oh my God, why don't we teach people how to do that first? Because this it's, it's fundamental to getting your crap on the internet, knowing how to put it like on a server on the internet, learn how to install Linux, learn how to patch it, learn how to learn, learn Unix commands, learn VI, fuck emacs, and learn how to just live in a command line for a week.

You know, spend a week in the command line, learning your server, learn what top does, learn what PS does, LS. Um, or you can do what everybody else does and pay the $7.99 a month to a network solutions to have them host everything for them and never have to deal with it.

If you give a dime to network solutions, I will come to your home and cock punch you. They are the devil. Network solutions is the devil. They are, they are, they are just them, they and, and GoDaddy have their own separate level of hell. Yes, I agree. Um, I, I, I agree in theory to a certain degree with, with, uh, you on this. Um, if you're going to be, if you're going to call yourself an internet professional, if you're going to get out there and become a programmer and you're going to, you know, put your stuff out on the web,

you should know how your server works. Well, I think that's just, I, I would much rather people learn that as a fundamental before learning hello world. You know, I would, everybody should know how to do it because it's one of the, it's really not hard to, to run a server. It's, it's, it's surprisingly simple. And the, the add-on effects are your, you will run your own home computer even better.

Well, I was about to say, I, I would go a step back even further and most people don't even know how their computers work. Well, that's true. Um, yeah, no, just knowing what your computer can do is fundamental, but knowing that even like if you're running a PC, well then you've got your own problems. But if you're running a Mac, your Mac is basically a Unix machine, a powerhouse. So everything that you do

on your server can be done on a Mac in terminal, but I prefer iTerm. iTerm 2 is great. Um, but use, yeah, I mean, once you learn that stuff, then that just, that's an add-on to your daily life. And it, it, it reaps benefits far beyond just learning how to, you know, write a line of Python or Perl or PHP or Ruby, you know? So I, I love this article, you know, Dave is a curmudgeonly dude, but, uh, this was,

this was one of those like, Jesus, that's, that's a great, great piece. Yeah. No, it's a good piece. Um, now speaking of not so great, let's talk about Instagram. Um, well I actually, uh, well I'm not a huge fan of Instagram in general, um, uh, or any of this stuff, but, uh, I, this is a very shrewd move on their part. It's interesting that what we're talking about, let's actually talk about what we're

talking about. So people can not, um, Instagram releases the Instagram direct, which lets you share pictures with, uh, individuals or small groups, direct messaging for, uh, in Twitter parlance or Facebook parlance, which is interesting because Twitter just announced photos and DMS before Instagram came out with it. So they're going after that. Did I, or did I not just say, uh,

probably five or six episodes ago, every single one of these services is becoming exactly the same. They're homogenizing. They're all homogenizing. They are all becoming the exact same thing. The interesting thing with Instagram is they are now technically a part of Facebook. So it's a bit weird that they're trying to build out their own, but this is a, this is a meant to combat Snapchat, obviously.

Yes, absolutely. But the difference between this and Snapchat is, uh, the ephemerality of it. You know, these, these photos last. Well, as I've spent 10, you know, I spent 10 years arguing with the recording industry way back in the day that anything that is streaming online can be recorded. Snapchat pictures can be, you can take pictures of the picture.

Yeah. You can do screen caps and it's supposed to tell you when a screen cap happens, but it's not going to tell you when I have my secondary camera pointed at my iPhone taking a picture of it. And once something is in the digital realm, it can, copies can be made and there is no true way to have something self-destruct. There is no Maxwell smart button.

Exactly. And even if you can go back to like sound, um, Apple goes a long way to prevent you from, uh, like with their movies, there, there are things that they do with their, um, encryption with the movies that don't let you like, like for, um, like pull the audio out or pull screen caps out. But if you have a program called, uh, audio hijack pro, which I recommend every

put on, everybody put on their computer, it lets you take, uh, audio from the soundboard because once it's in the computer, there are ways to get it back out, you know? Yeah. And same with video. And if it's on the screen, you can get pictures of it no matter what they try and do and all the, the bullshit hoops they jump through. So yeah. Okay. That's a, we're, we're off on a tangent there.

Off on a tangent. Yes. Uh, but yeah, I mean, this is, this makes perfect sense. I mean, uh, I, I would be really surprised if there's anybody on chat on a Snapchat that doesn't have Instagram. Uh, Instagram already did this with a video to basically take the wind out of Vine sales. Uh, Vine is still around, but you certainly don't hear that much about it.

Barely. They're barely around. And, and I have a feeling that this might do the exact same thing to Snapchat. Vine was, had huge buzz. Snapchat has huge buzz. Um, people are already using the Instagram app and now they can send their boobies directly through this. So easier. Ah, ah, no boobies allowed on Instagram. No boobies. I've had people, I've had friends kicked off for the, the inadvertent nip slip. Are they going to monitor, but are they going to monitor private messages like they do public? That would be interesting. I'll send you a picture of my

dong later and we'll see if I get kicked off. How about you send it? We don't have to do everything together, Jason. Uh, you know, this is, this is in the, in the, this is for science. Okay. For science. That'll be, that'll be our new domain. We'll get cocks for science.com.

What are you doing, honey? This is for, this is research. It's research. Um, my problem with the Instagram direct thing was their, their blog post and the video that they posted, which was these hipster douchebags rolling around in an old pacer, uh, jumping around, throwing crap in the air just to be viral or whatever it was. It was, it, it, the video like made my skin crawl. It really did. It made me want to, it made me want to jump through the screen,

find every single person in that video and the cameraman and the sound guy and punch him in the face. Yeah. Well, I, I have a higher tolerance for this stuff cause I live in hipster central, but, uh, this is the way of the world now. This is, this is, you're going to die all next year because every single advertising campaign is going to be geared right at these idiots and it's all going to be hipsters.

I don't want a beard. I don't want flannel. I don't want tight jeans and I don't want to fucking pacer. Okay. Okay. The thing is the hipster, the hipster meme has now gone mainstream. It isn't just this thing anymore. It's, it's, you know, you could be in, in Boise, Idaho and you're a hipster these days. So we're just going to have to sit and bear the, bear it for a while.

Okay. I'm never, I'm never going to ride a fixie. I'm never going to drive a classic car. I'm never going to grow a beard and I'm in Nirvana is dead. I'm never going to wear flannel again. So okay. Not going to happen. Okay. Sorry. Sorry for the, but you are going to send me your dick through a private message on Instagram. Awesome. Yeah. Would, uh, would you like a, uh, two messence level? Is there a slider for that? Is there a filter? I'd like

very poor lighting as bad as possible. Anyways, moving on. Okay. So there was a, there's this little company called a tiny spec that did a flash game called glitch. And this is Stuart Butterfield's old company. Uh, Stuart got famous for flicker. He and Katerina fake did flicker

together. Um, and after they got their big paycheck from, uh, from Yahoo, uh, they went their separate ways and Stuart did this game called glitch, which was like this world building type of thing. And it failed because it was built on flash. I do believe that's why they failed. Um, yeah, I mean, obviously, but they had, they had a lot of great talent at that company. I think, I think Daniel Berker worked there for a while. Who's one of my favorite

designers and a, in a friend. Um, but the company went under and what they did was basically open sourced all of the art and most of the game engine, which is really cool. You know, there was, uh, if you go to, uh, there's a link in the show notes to a boing boing article that, uh, Stuart posted with all of the, uh, the info on what they did and how they did it. And you can go to, uh, from there, there are links to all of the assets. So you can just go download

it all. Right. And it's, it's hopeful that, you know, some game designer somewhere will take it and make good stuff out of it. And I think, I think it's a super cool move. I think it's a super cool move. Why don't they send it all to that guy that rebuilt a Mario brothers? Oh yeah. Okay. Um, callbacks, you know, I know, I know. Uh, I just, I thought it was super cool. I mean, it's, it's great, especially if it's something that, that, you know, people were really into and loved and you just got to shut it down. Why not?

Throw those assets out there. What else are you going to do with them? That's great. Yeah. If they couldn't sell them in a fire cell, which is what usually happens, you know, somebody buys that stuff up, but they just shut down, paid the people back who paid for the service and then just open sourced it. Yeah. It's super cool. And I mean, I've, I've known Stuart for God forever now. Um, and Oh, I think today is the 10th anniversary of Flickr actually becoming a thing. I saw a tweet

from him today. Uh, which is cool, but I'm, I'm really glad that they did this and it's, it's just one of those things that you don't see often enough. Yeah. Now let's talk about Google a little bit more because there are conflicting stories about what they just did with, uh, their email and images embedded in an email. Um, which on one side it says that Google's going to be caching all the images that come through, uh,

like, uh, spam, not, not even spam emails, um, just any direct, direct email campaigns. Like it's called direct email campaigns. Yeah. Like if you buy something from Amazon or even it's not even just that it's like even your confirmation emails that come back and things like that or newsletters or anything like that, they're going to cash them on their side.

And what everybody was saying yesterday was that it's going to screw up email marketers because they're not going to see open rates anymore because what, what, what happens when you get an email with an image in it, there's a, there's a tracking pixel. There's a one by one clear gift that they put in with a query string with a ton of, uh, just numerical data that, that says this is the person that opened, this is the subscriber. He saw that email. So when you're doing email campaigns, you can see open rates and see how many people open the email

that you, you sent them and all of the links have tracking data too. So you can see how many people click that just gives you a return on investment on your email campaigns. Yeah. That's how you vaguely get an idea of whether or not your email campaigns are working, right? This is not nefarious shit here. This is just common tracking that everybody does. You know, if I'm spending $20,000 on an email campaign for the design and prizes or, you know, whatever I'm doing,

I would like to just know if that money's being well spent. And, and there's two camps here. One says Google is completely screwing the email marketers by caching the images because they're only going to load once. But there's another side that says, wait, no, they're actually, the email marketers are going to get more transparency. And because they're still going to get those, those, that tracking information. So there, there are two sides of this argument right now. And I'm curious how it's going

to play out. Yeah. But I guess MailChimp said that, no, this is a good thing because they're going to get more information and other people are saying they're going to get less information. So I don't think anybody knows what the hell they're talking about at this point. Yeah. I don't think anybody does either. I think we're just going to, they're going to do it and then we'll fit, we'll see what happens. It's going to be, see how it plays out. And, and Google is notorious for tweaking things without really telling people either. So things might change.

And, but in, and for Google, it's, it's an interesting play and it's almost, you know, into the antitrust realm because Google doesn't do email marketing. So if they're trying to cut email marketers off at the knees, a way to do that is to cut their tracking off. And that, that really gets into, gets into really gray legal territory if they, if they do that, because they are the biggest email provider on the planet. So it gets really interesting too, because if they're going to go ahead and

cash and host everything, they could actually throw in code to block certain things or, you know, make sure that by default, this image doesn't show up for anything that might be competing with any Google service offers. So it, it gets weird. This gets really weird. It does get weird. I mean, they do, they do a lot of filtering already based on spyware and malware and, and attachments, which makes it really hard to send somebody a PHP file if you're an actual legitimate PHP programmer. So thank you for

that, Google. Um, that's always been fun. Yeah. Um, and thank you Dropbox for existing because now I just sent a Dropbox link. Um, but yeah, it's, I don't know, I don't know where I sit on this. I mean, I think their tab, their, their Gmail tab, uh, crappy oko that they came out with a while ago is worse than this. So we'll see, we'll see how this plays out, but I want to keep an eye on it because email marketing is still huge. I still get paid by several clients to do email newsletters

like, you know, mockup email newsletters for them in HTML. Yeah. So if that, that part of my business is going to dry up because Google's doing this, then I want to talk about it and I want to know what the ramifications are, how to circumvent it. And do I still want to keep using Gmail or in, in promoting Gmail? Because I love it. I love Gmail. It has made my life so much simpler.

And almost everybody honestly has Gmail now. Like it's very rare to see people that don't have at least, at least a backup email address that's through Gmail. I mean, everybody has their company email address, but for most people, for their private email, they're using Gmail now. So it's a big deal. Straight tap to the NSA. Yeah, that's it. Speaking of Gmail though, that's the other little notification that you threw in the show notes that they're actually going to be adding

or have already added the ability to be able to see when people read your message. I didn't add that. What are you talking about? I don't know about this. Oh, really? Wow. Yeah. Maybe I put this in there. All right. With the new Gmail, people will know when you open that message. They're going to be adding in the functionality that you see with say your Facebooks or whatever that you can now tell when people have read your email. Oh my God. So they're doing what AOL did in 1993. Exactly. Yes. That was always one of

the things. You always knew when somebody read your email in AOL. Yeah. And I don't have a problem with this. I like it. I wish to God that I had it through other non-Gmail things like with all my clients over the last 10 years when they go, I didn't see that. Yeah, exactly. Sure you didn't.

No, I mean, but since email is fairly stateless, it's interesting that they're doing this. I don't know. I don't know what I think about this. Yeah, I guess it's fine. Fuck it. It's fine. It's fine. I was like, you know, whatever. I like it. I think it's cool. I'm totally happy with it. I guess this is part of the other rollouts that they're doing. So yeah, if you're gonna if you're gonna, you know, dance with the beast, then you might as well get all the features that you can

get. Exactly. Yeah. So let's talk about zombies for a second. Real, actual zombies. Now, the folks apparently at Sandia, where our previous guest, Dr. Teeter worked, have figured out how to make zombie cells that actually work better than the living cells that they are cloning. Okay, what the

hell? I'm sorry, what the hell? I hate the fact that they actually use the term zombie. This is actual real science that's kind of interesting. They're coated in silica to form near perfect replicas. The silica replicant cells survive greater pressures and temperatures than flesh.

It's, you know, then flesh. Okay, I'm sorry, right there. Then flesh. You hit the fact that there's something that that's better than flesh. But there has been for ages. There already has been. I mean, they're the last Olympics that we had, there was the there was the whole controversy over the was a South African guy or Australian guy that had, you know, that had the fake leg that performed better than a human leg does. Oh, the guy that killed his girlfriend. Yeah, then he ended up doing some

other shit that wasn't so great. But you know, whatever. At the point in time, I mean, there's no surprise that we're that technology is starting to finally come up with with better replacements than you know, what a sack of flesh has done over 20 billion years of evolution. We're meat. Our meat bags are becoming non exist.

The meat bag, we're finally able to better the meat bag. Oh, God. So here's the here's the takeaway quote, our zombie cells bridge chemistry and biology to create forms that not only near perfectly resemble their past selves, but can do future work. He said terrifyingly, sign me up. I have no problem with this whatsoever. Like I said, the only problem I have is that they're actually just use the term zombie. But that makes sense for marketing. Because, you know, zombie apocalypse, and everybody has to throw this stuff in now.

I love this. I think this is great. Keep it going. But I you know, I'm also going to eat the fake steak and growing in the lab. And you know, I'll go ahead and put the chip in my head as long as it's not made by Google. Okay. Jiminy, Jiminy Jeepers. So now we've got we've got two stories left here. And one of us is is called the case for the midlife gap year. Baby boomers are kind of taking a break and

reevaluating their career. Are they doing it by choice? Yes, absolutely by choice. Because most people I know are don't have a choice about it. I love this. They this is right on the cusp of our age group. I think it starts at 45 and goes to 65. And they talk about retirees and all this stuff. But yeah, I'm really close to this right now, personally and professionally about just saying

fuck it and finding something new to do that's not so physically inactive and professionally soul sucking. Right. So I like this article. I it's a good read, I think. But it talks about one one aspect of retirement where people just get bored to death. People don't want to stop, you know, but they want to find something that's that's satisfying emotionally and spiritually that makes

them happy. Yeah. So I think there's a there's a case to be made for almost everybody to take some time and reevaluate where you are and think about, you know, the long haul. Yeah. No, even the short, even the short haul. I find something that you want to do that you can at least pay the bills and get to where you want to be and just have a good time. Like, you know, stop just worrying about the nine to five and your mortgage and whatever and just figure out how you want to live that's

going to make you a better person and make you happier. Yeah. I mean, this is something we've been dancing around through a lot of these podcasts. I mean, we've talked about how, you know, if you make over X amount of money, your happiness quotient actually starts to go down. And I've talked personally about how, like, maybe I'm just not going to chase after things quite so hard anymore, scale it back a little bit and enjoy other aspects of my life a lot more.

Shit, I've even thought about basically packing it all in and going and finding something that I'd, you know, it's like, oh, let's invest with some other people in a vineyard and try that out for a couple years. That would be awesome. I think things are just so different now. Our lives and these careers are so all-consuming and so stressful that after you've been doing it for 10, 15, 20 years, you're done. Yeah. You're just done with it and you can't imagine doing it anymore and it's just,

it's killed you. So I like this. I like this too. Stick a fork in me, I'm done. Yeah. It's actually kind of a callback to this week's Sons of Anarchy, which I won't say any more about, but damn, that was good. Yeah. Go ahead. Sorry. No, it's okay. I don't watch the show, but Facebook blew up. So apparently, yeah. Oh my God. It was so good. You have to watch that show.

I guess so. It's this really good article. I like the concept of it. The timing that they're talking about and the years can be all over the place. Like, you know, they're talking about people who have, you know, climbed the corporate ladder for decades and raised children. I'm like, I haven't even had kids yet, but I'm definitely feeling this way. Yeah. And it's interesting too, because I also just, I mean, we know you and I both know people that are near our age or are certainly like within

10 years that haven't even started careers yet. And they're burnt out, which I'm like, how can you be burnt out? You don't even have anything going yet. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. It's, I just think that this, we're just, and we've talked about it in some other articles too. I just think that this whole social networking 24 seven online existence that we all live now is, is starting to really kill us. Well, it's not now we've been doing this for 20 years, you know, we've been online 24 seven

for 20 years. Well, you, I, and the people that we know and the people that are like us are the test case for all this stuff. We, we have lived it. And I can tell you that living this way for as long as you and I have is not good for you. No, there, there are certain aspects to it. You need to temper it, but you know, after, after having three months in, you know, rural Pennsylvania, hanging out with

people who do run a vineyard, they're far happier. Yeah. And you know, it's a, it's a different type of lifestyle. This is, this has given me a career and I'm, I'm forever grateful for the career that I've had. But now I'm thinking like, I'm using the career now to pay off all my debts that I've accrued from mismanaging that stupid ass career. Um, and looking for a simpler way to go and something

that's different and something that is more, um, enjoyable. And you know, like we're in our forties now. Well, you're barely, but, uh, that, and they're saying the forties and the new 20, uh, somebody tell my knees that when I wake up in the morning because they didn't get that memo. Um, I can feel time ticking down. So I want to do something more, more enjoyable. And, uh, I, I definitely recommend checking out this article and think of it and doing a deep think on it,

you know, not just, not just kind of the, Oh, thinking about it while you're having your Frankenberry in the morning or whatever, just think about what makes you happy and how to sustain that in the longterm and the rest of your life instead of going for the golden ring. Because, you know, when we started, this was right. We, when we started our careers, it was right after the, the mindset of you have a job for life really started to fall apart.

Yeah. You know, you, you're not working for IBM or GM for the rest of your life. You know, you don't get one job and it stays with you. I've had 30 jobs, you know, or even the promotion within a company that didn't happen. That was already dead. Uh, certainly like the first job I had when I wanted to raise, they said basically too bad.

And so I sent out my resume and got my raise by switching to another company. That's the only way you could do it. Um, yeah, that whole concept is just dead, dead, dead. And, uh, yeah, it's just a, this is a good article. It's really interesting. And we've talked about it a lot. We've talked about a couple of books that talk about it. It's, it's scaling it back, not, not trying to reach out there and grab that golden ring that doesn't exist and people will pull out of your hands anyways. Yep. I, I, it's more about just self

contentedness and happiness. I think that's what you need to look for instead of, you know, am I going to make a million bucks next year or is my startup going to make it? Because I'm going to tell you right now, nah, it's not. So now this one, this, this last piece we have it, I was, I was cracking up. Um, it's the burger King in Norway. Yeah. Like the Norway franchisees,

I guess in Norway. Um, they did a Facebook campaign that said, we've got 38,000 fans on Facebook. Let's find out who are the true fans. Here's the deal. If you're, they gave them a choice. Like, are you a true fan or would you like a Big Mac? And 30,000 people took the Big Mac. So it left them with 8,000 fans. Right. They, they basically bought 30,000 Big Macs for these people. They

sent him a coupon in Kroner or whatever. I think it's Kroner up there. Yeah. And, and, and, and a, uh, goodbye letter, like physically mailed it to him, which was awesome. And the video that we'll link to is, is, it's beautiful. I thought this was, I was, I was cracking up when I saw it. And so I'm, I'm going to post a, uh, a video or a picture in the show notes that I found yesterday that says, why eat with a clown when you can dine with a King?

That is a, it's a great little slogan. Um, it's a funny, funny thing to do. Uh, and I, I enjoyed the concept. Uh, my question is, uh, who's a true fan of any fast food restaurant? Yeah. And, and, and does it really like, who cares about being on a, who I've never understood people that like, like major corporations on Facebook. Like, why would you like Coca-Cola? Why would you like McDonald's?

Why would you like Burger King? If I would have, if they would have run this promotion here, I would have liked Burger King just so I could get a free Big Mac and because, and then go ahead and take me off your page. Cause I don't care anyway. So what am I going to learn from your, from your status updates? No, that, that comes to back to just the whole false fandom and yeah, yeah. And the uselessness of corporations using social media, you know, how would they spend, you know, $60,000 to, to, to get rid of people who were just following their

updates? Whatever it, but the video, the way they did it, I thought was tongue in cheek. They've gotten way more press from the, doing the campaign than they have for the campaign itself. You know, it's one of those, it's, it, it has add on a value to them. Exactly. Yeah. It's, it's quite clever. It's quite funny. Uh, it just makes me sad for people that would like get upset about the fact that they can't be a like Burger King anymore. Yeah, whatever. You got a Big Mac. Shut up. Exactly. Go to Subway instead.

Eh, too much sodium in the bread. Really? Oh God. Check, check the stats on that. Okay. Anyways. Shit. Thanks for crapping on my one, my one, my only place I go to anymore. Well, it's, it's far better for you than Burger King or, or, uh, McDonald's. I'll give you that. Yep. This week in false advertising. So there's never been a particular lack of things

that, uh, I wish I could have unseen that have come across my eyeballs because of you, Jason. Uh, this one's way up there. What? You want to unsee this one? Yes, I do. So somebody on Facebook posted this picture and it's a picture of a topless blonde woman. And I was, I was looking at this picture, which, which, which, well, hang on. Don't spoil it here. Don't step on

the joke. Um, and it took me a, a good minute. I'm staring at this and trying to figure out what the story was about because, uh, the story is about a gentleman, um, named Brian. Yes. Brian thought his tattoo was brilliant. Dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, until he went to

prison. And it's a picture of, you know, a fairly well-endowed, topless blonde. With flowing locks. Now, when you, this is, this goes back to those things you see on 4chan where they post it says, hang on. See, even the dog doesn't like it. Yeah. It says, when you see it, you'll shit bricks. So, Sophia, sit down. Quit barking. We're doing a podcast. Um, the, the blonde

woman is on his back and the nipples are on his buttocks. Yes. Yes, they are. Um, that's about it. I've been, I've been in tears ever since I saw what this guy did. This guy put a naked woman on his ass and went to jail. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, dear. Yeah. Luckiest, luckiest cellmate

ever. So, uh, it'll be in the show notes. Just go look at it. Or don't. If, uh, if you, if you want to go with Brian's theory that what can, what has been seen cannot be unseen. I mean, this isn't like Goatsy. This is, this is still funny. It's funny. Yes. So, yeah. And the, the, uh, the well-endowed lady, as, as you were pointing out, is really just man-ass. Yeah.

That's, that's, that's man-butt. It's just man-ass. Yo, seriously? Are you shitting me? Boing Boing this week has a, uh, what they're calling the worst toy of 2013, which is a child's potty with a, a built-in iPad holder. Yes.

Now, at first glance, this might be a terrible toy because children don't know how to wipe their bums yet and, uh, could quite be the grossest iPad you've ever played with. I'm just wondering, can I get a, can I get a grown-up version of this thing? Yeah. Well, we have hands, which hopefully aren't too involved with when you're sitting down. True. I guess, I guess you can just hold it, but it, you know, maybe just, uh, like

an articulate, or, uh, yeah, an articulated arm that kind of swings out. Well, you know how you've got that, uh, boom stand for your mic that swivels around? Exactly. Maybe you just need to do a little soldering on, on your day off. Okay. Figure out some sort of thing that you can say, attach it to your side toilet and, you know, swing that iPad around and position it correctly. Uh, make sure the sound is off when you're pursuing whatever you might be looking over in there. Um, yeah, no, this

is a horrible toy, but I mean, let's actually go through the, the math here. Uh, they're sitting down and they're probably not wiping anyways at this age. So not too much of a worry there. Uh, your iPad that you let your, your child who is young enough to be using this all the time is already the most disgusting thing that you could possibly put in your hand. So this is not really adding too much to it. I like it. I think it's cool.

Okay. This goes back to the, uh, the naming of the iPad, which I said should have been called the I pood. Uh, they should have named, they should have named this children's toilet. I pood. So mommy, I pood. Yeah. The CTA digital two in one iPoddy with activity seat for iPad is a horrible name. People. Yeah. Come on, man. So many possibilities.

Jesus. Go to marketing class. Yes. So get one for your kids. I recommend it. Yeah. And get one for Jason. Please. At tugboatyards.com. It'll be one of the, uh, subscription levels. Ah, well, no, we, we have changed it now. Oh, you can go to tugboatyards.com slash gog or because of our, our, uh, wonderful episode last time where we were in tears. Uh, we do own

tugyards.com now. So if you just go to tugyards.com, you can find the, uh, the donation form and, uh, throw us a few bones and I will get a, a, a, an iPood. Oh, I think I have a new domain for you to get for, for this particular invention that you're going to make with the boom mic.

It can be the, the tug arm. Oh, Jesus. I'm here all week, people. Welcome to this week in shit we put on our computers. There was a, uh, an article that I got linked to this week called the top 10 programming fonts by Dan Benjamin, the founder and runner of the five by five podcasting network. Yes. Um, he, he talks about his 10 favorite

programming fonts, which is, it's a very interesting article. He, he picks some of the ones that I really like and I think his top pick is one of the ones that I used to use a lot, but I would, I'm going to throw out Adobe created a font called source code pro, which is fantastic. I run that in BB edit. I run it in I term two and I run it and code it too. Those are my three main programming

tools. Um, it's, it's amazing. So if you, if you write code for any duration, you definitely want to have a specific font for writing code because it makes your life a lot easier. It's just a little thing that goes a long way. So check out source source code pro is free. Definitely check it out.

I'm a huge fan of the number three on his list, the deja vu sans mon though. I've been using that for a long time. Yeah, that's good too. Yeah, that's a good one. So good article. If you're a programmer, check it out. You've probably never thought about it. Uh, it does make a difference, especially if you're on one of your 24 hour marathon coding sessions. Yeah. It just makes your, it, it reduces a lot of eye strain and lets you find blocks of code faster when you're just scanning. So if you're writing any kind of code, check it out. Yep. So this next one I got is, uh, it's an oldie,

goodie and it kind of contradicts a, a very long blog post that I wrote a long time ago. Uh, but, uh, I have re-embraced words with friends. You, yes, I noticed you're, you're, you're one of those people that I was talking about, uh, just last week when I was like, I can't stand it when as soon as I make a move, they make a move immediately. Yeah. Sorry about that. You are, you are fast and you are back on the game. Uh, you and I played together when this first came out and, uh, then you

disappeared for a very long time because of the cheating problem. Cause I, I, I literally have 20 games going at any one time. Um, I do the, just find a game because if I'm going to jump in, I'm going to play and I like to make lots of moves, you know, just keep me sharp. And I come up with different words and I have, uh, kind of memorized the South pods dictionary. Uh, yeah, I literally, I have read the dictionary for that. Uh, there, there's two dictionaries that,

uh, general, general Scrabble users go by. Yeah. The words with friends dictionary is their, of their own design and completely, uh, opaque. So nobody actually knows what actually works and what won't. Uh, you know, the good thing, I mean, back in the day when I was a huge Scrabble fan, I, I did a very good job of memorizing the two and three letter words. Um, and that, all of those work on words with friends still and very useful. Yeah. The learn the two and

three letter tables, they will, it will save you. Um, it's fun. It's free. I mean, I actually, I paid for it. I got the HD version on my iPad and the regular version on my phone, but I've, I've paid for it long ago. So jumping back in was fun. Yeah. And, uh, all the cheaters that used to be around seem to be gone. So, you know, it's, it's kind of fun. I think it's one of those games that, you know, we're starting to see this kind of evolution of, of how these kind of, uh, all of the, all the, uh, iPhone games are, are going, which is first comes out,

everybody's super, super into it. And then there's a dropout and then some people who really just enjoy playing the game come back and, uh, yeah, the cheaters will be gone by now because they've moved on to something else. Although I still wonder is, is draw something still out there? It must be. It's out there, but I never played it. I never got into that one.

No, I'm pretty much just on words with friends, uh, which I play with you and like two or three other people that I don't ever see actually in real life. Um, and then I'm still on my two trivia apps, trivia and quiz up still playing both of those. Yeah. I've kind of fallen off quiz up a bit, but I've noticed that they're, they're adding questions all the time. So when I open it back up, all my favorite categories have new questions.

So that's fun. I enjoy that. Cause I got to the point with most of my categories where it was, it's just a race to press the button because you already know the answers. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of them are the same. It's a, you know, it's the same issue that trivia had. Um, quiz up is just doing a much better job of trying to keep things seated.

Yeah. So my next one, I haven't actually played yet, but I bought it and I'm excited about it. Okay. Now this is an app from the guys that made zombies run, which was a Kickstarter campaign way back. That is a running app that gives you a story about zombies chasing you while you're running.

I can't run. I, you know, 15 years of skateboarding have blown out my knees. So I can't, I cannot run, but I can walk. I love to walk. We all know I love to walk. Now they have a walking app and it's called the walk. Go figure. Um, this was actually done in conjunction with the, uh, NHS and department of health in England. Uh, they helped pay for it and it's a 500 mile thriller where every step counts. It's time to walk for your life is what the tagline

is on their site. Um, I am super excited about this one. It's cute and it's clever, but you know how I feel about, uh, game, gameizing regular life. I think this will be fun. I'll give you a full roundup next week. I paid for it. I'm good to go. How much is it? I'm actually going to get it too. I'm going to use this for a week instead of moves except for my biking. Uh, it's not cheap. I think it was four bucks. Ah, fuck it. I'll get it. Yeah. I'll try it out and see if it annoys the hell out of me or if I think it's clever. Yeah. I mean,

you start out in Scotland, so I'm down with that. I love Scotland. It's one of my favorite, my one of my favorite places in the world. Right. So I'll give it a shot, but I hope I have a PD whiskey while I start my walk. Well, you just get a beer hat. One of those beer, beer cozy hats. Um, I don't know. Hopefully it's not, it does track location, but I'm hoping it's not geo dependent because it is four degrees here. And while I am not about to go outside and walk,

I do have an elliptical in the other room. So hopefully it will just do motion and go from there. So I'll have a full roundup next week for sure. Cool. Yeah. I'm going to check this out to you. I'll give it a shot. There was a, there was another one that, uh, Kevin Rose put up the other day called fit star, which is kind of a personal trainer app where they, they, you put in your specifics, your weight, your height and all that stuff and your physical ability and they craft

workouts for you. And you get to tell it like, was it too hard? Was it just right? Was it easy? And then it, it learns from that and builds more workouts from you. I've got it. I haven't paid for any of the upgrades yet because when Kevin tweeted it, he basically broke it. Um, so I finally got in and got registered. So I'm going to give that a shot for next week too. Um, and I did buy the one app that I said I would never buy. Yeah. Cause I got a new corporate credit card and I had to test it out

on something. So I tested it out on iTunes to make sure it worked. Um, I bought the duck dynasty game. Oh God. What is wrong with you, man? It's kind of fun. I'm sorry. It's kind of fun. It's just a bunch of mini games. Um, and when you, when you die, you lose a beard. So you have three beards and when you die three times, you lose all your beards. And like, seriously, they're like 20 second

mini games all in, and, and pretty well done 3d. Uh, it definitely a pro studio did it. Um, it's, uh, who's it? Red, red games did it. Um, yeah. Battle of the beards. It's actually pretty fun. I got to say that it's what I, what I go back and buy it again. Probably not. I can't say if I recommend it, but if you're a duck dynasty fan, you're probably going to get a lot more enjoyment

out of it than I will. So probably yes. Uh, I've never seen an episode and I never will. So, oh, there was, wow. Oh, now let's get back to the actual working apps that I said that I was going to review this week. Yeah. Uh, PDF pen scan plus. I used to use a, for scanning on my iPhone,

I used to use a app called, what the hell was it? Is it gone? Oh no, there it was. Uh, Jot Knot Pro. Jot Knot Pro was my go-to for scanning with the iPhone. You don't need a flatbed scanner anymore. The, the resolution on your iPhone is so good. It's, it's almost better than using a scanner, a flatbed. So I, when I was scanning my bills and I'd scan them into Evernote, Jot Knot Pro was good because you'd scan it. It would, uh, turn it to black and white and let you like do edge

detection and then it would do auto correction on it. So you'd have like a regular piece of paper size scan when you're done. You could save it out to Evernote into different, uh, notebooks and that's how it's getting on my bills. Yeah. So, uh, PDF pen, what the hell was it called again? Uh, PDF pen scan plus does the same thing, but, uh, also does, um, OCR and some other goodies to it so far.

It's better than Jot Knot Pro. Um, I haven't had that much time to play with it because I just don't have anything to scan anymore. Yeah. I'm so good with everything being electronic that I almost don't need that kind of app, but I wanted to give it a shot because PDF pen pro or I mean, uh, Jot Knot Pro has saved my ass so many times that it's, it's one of those things where I like to have a really good scanning app on my phone. It's, it's just kind of one of those things you, you keep in the tool

belt. You almost never need. Um, but when you need it, it saves your bacon. Same with a PDF pen pro for, I've got that on my iPad, my iPhone that has saved me so much time because people send me PDFs and I have to sign them and send them back. And with PDF pen pro, you just open it up, use your finger or a stylus and you can sign it, date it, send it back. You're done.

And it's not cheap. It's not cheap, but it's worth the, the hassle because otherwise I'd have to print it, scan it, you know, do all this crap. I'd have to print it, sign it, scan the signed one and send it back, which is just archaic. Yeah. It's a horribly stupid way to do things. And I'm not going to install Acrobat or any of that crap. So my PDF pen pro and this new one are definitely in my, uh, in my must haves for anybody that has an iDevice and does any kind

of business with PDF. Excellent. Yeah. They sponsor most other podcasts, but nobody sponsors us. So I thought I would just throw it out anyway. It's a, it's a good tool to have. We'll make sure we tag them in the notes and perhaps they'll throw some money our way next time. Yeah. Don't hold your breath.

Lots of books this week. Yep. Did a lot of reading. Uh, I quickly slammed through, uh, Steelheart. Steelheart. Yeah. Steelheart. Yes. Uh, which you had recommended last week. Uh, that was a great read. Um, really fun. It was fun. It was fun. Went through it really quickly. Uh, the only complaint I had, which you asked me right after I said, I finished it a little too much telegraphing of, of, you know, what's going on a little, you know, M night Shyamalama ding dong

thing happening, which is, I, I hate when, when authors kind of do that thing where they make it, they're, they're telegraphing what's going on and the characters themselves are seeing these things as well, but none of them can figure this out, even though you figured it out days ahead of time. Yeah. It was, that was a little too heavy handed. I give him that. Yeah. That, that, that's my only complaint, but I love the universe. I love the writing. Uh, I thought it was clever. I thought it was smart. I hadn't read anything quite like it before. And I'm happy that he's going to be

continuing, uh, kind of that universe and writing a little bit more about it. It's going to be good. Yeah, absolutely. I, I, it was, like I said, it was a, it was genuinely a, uh, a gem of a find. Yeah. So thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Audible for actually recommending a book that I don't have to return. It's actually weird that it was thrown up as a recommendation because at least on Amazon, it's classified as a young adult novel, which I didn't think it was. I didn't feel that way at all. It just could be some weird tag that they may have had on it. Who knows? Yeah. I didn't

peg it as young adult at all. Yeah. No, I thought it was just genuinely good sci-fi. So, um, the first book I read this week was you are now less dumb, how to conquer mob mentality, how to buy happiness and all the other ways to outsmart yourself by David McCraney. Now this book is a follow-up to, uh, his first book, you are not so smart. Why you have too many friends on Facebook, why your memory is mostly fiction and 46 other dot, dot, dot things. Okay. We covered, I covered this on the show before. Yeah. Um, yeah. His first book made me feel

like a moron. The second book actually gives you tools to help defeat yourself. Okay. Um, it, it was a pretty quick, uh, all my books are on Audible. I don't have time to read. So, um, the, it was a good read on Audible about, I think it was eight hours or whatever. So four hours, if you're like me and insane and play everything at two X, it, it, there's some really good tips and tricks in there. I'm actually going to go back and listen to it again. Um, because some of the,

some of the tips are, you have to kind of figure out how you can work them into your daily life, but they're really good. I mean, that's all I can say. If you're, if you're interested in brain hacking and why you think the things that you do and want to get better at it, this is a good book for that. Cool. So my next book is called the things they carried by Tim O'Brien, which is, uh, a book of stories from the Vietnam war. Uh, I'm sounds uplifting holiday reading.

Well, I'm, I'm a war junkie. I love, I love reading war books. Um, it's, it's not that great of a book in my terms. It's a lot of fiction. And in between the stories, they interject, uh, the author's notes on how the story that you just read is not real, which was, I'm like, okay, well that kind of ruined the story for me there. And he talks about, you know, different types of

war stories and what makes a good war story. And, um, it, I mean, it was interesting. I gave it like a three star. Um, and some of the stories were pretty gut wrenching, even though you know that they weren't real, but he goes back and tells you what the real story was after, which was not nearly as interesting. Um, it was, it was interesting. I mean, it's, it's okay. I wouldn't, I wouldn't

pick it up. Don't waste your time on it. Okay. Um, now I, I said that I was going to do the funny book. I read Rob, Rob Delaney's mother, wife, sister, human, warrior, Falcon, yardstick, turban, cabbage. Um, the cabbage at the end is what makes that funny. Fantastic. Really? Okay.

Absolutely. Fantastic. It's very short. Um, I think it was four hours on audible, but he reads it on the audible version, which is good because on some books it's good that the author reads when it's like a biography. Uh, if it's fiction, stay the hell away from author read books, unless it's Neil Gaiman. They're terrible, but this was a very well done author read book. He's a performer, so he knows how to speak well, but the stories were amazing. Um, and I was laughing the whole damn

time. Well, except for the, I left the first two thirds, the second, the last third is, uh, a little bit maudlin because he talks about getting sober after he crashed his car and all this shit. So that part was a little bit more, but he, even, even the parts where he's, he's got two broken arms and talking about how to jerk off was pretty funny. Okay. Um, my, it definitely just pick up the

damn book. Read it. He's, he's made a career for himself on Twitter. That is just amazing. Um, now my last book, Oh, one of my last books, I got this book in the mail. Well, actually a couple of weeks ago, I got an email from Mark Frauenfelder from boing boing. Um, they just asked for my address cause he wanted to send me something, which was, it was like a, a list, you know, a, a list mail. I'm like, okay, whatever I'll take, I'll take free stuff. So I get, I get home one day

and there is this giant package and I open it up and it's this monster book called cool tools, a catalog of possibilities by Kevin Kelly. I've seen this before. Kevin Kelly is the, he was like the original editor of wired. Very smart guy has an amazing blog, great writer, great futurist. Um, so this is a, it, it's a self-published book that is very dense, very thick. And it, it literally is a

catalog of just cool stuff that he, that he built for his, he wrote it for his kids. So when they go out on their own, they could just like, look up a topic and find all the good stuff. Right. Uh, lots of, uh, lots of contributors. Mark was a contributor on it. I think that's how I got it. Um, but man, yeah, I, I've just, I, I've got it on the coffee table. I flipped through it. I find just tons of cool stuff. I am in a downsizing phase at the moment, so I'm not buying anything. Um, but if there's, if there's something I need, I can flip through

this book and find it and I will get the best one that I can possibly get. It is a really cool book. Definitely check it out. Excellent. Yeah. It is very, very heavy. It is very big and very heavy. Um, now for the holidays, since everybody's going to have time off soon, I wanted to throw out just two classics. Okay. The first one is a series. It's a sci-fi series by Lois

McMaster Bujold called the Vorkosigan series. Okay. I think there are 16 books in it at this point. So it's a, it's a commitment. Um, I've got them all on audible. I've actually read them all on in print, but I've also got them on audible because they, uh, they're read by Grover Gardner, who is one of the most prolific audio book readers in the world. And he does the entire

series. So there's no, there's no change up with reader. It's fantastic. Um, if you, if you're into it, go to audible, click on the, uh, they, they show you the chronological listing because a lot of the books are written out of order, but there's a chronological listing of the books to get in order. I highly recommend it. It's some of my favorite sci-fi. She's built a wonderful world with a great protagonist. Um, and just seriously, check them out. If

you've never read any of them, just start at the beginning and it's, it's, it's a, it's a beautiful world. I, I can't recommend it enough. All right. Now, if you don't want to have that type of time commitment, I'm going to throw out a, I'm going to throw out one book that is a must read and I'm going to go back and reread it. It's called shadow divers. This is, this is a book about a story of a couple of salvage divers, um, who found

a U boat off the coast of New Jersey that wasn't supposed to be there. And it was like a, a found U boat. And it's the story of them. Like it's more of a, like a modern day detective story, how they figured out what the, who this boat belonged to and what it was. And just a lot of research and a lot of diving and a lot of cool diving stuff that I'd never heard about

before. I've never, I've never done any scuba diving. Uh, so for me it was, it was a really fascinating read and just the way the story is told is, is really well done. Cannot recommend it enough. Yeah. That one actually sounds pretty interesting to me. Oh, the other ones don't know. I'm kidding. What do you got? What do you got, Mr. Well, actually I was, I was sitting around on my iPad on my couch and I was surfing around on Amazon trying to find

something new, some new authors, some something. And I actually turned around and saw an old book that I've had basically since the day it came out. Uh, it came, this is, uh, I'm going to talk about the truth machine, uh, by James L. Halper. And it came out in 1996 as speculative science fiction. Um, so I thought it would be really interesting cause I remember absolutely loving it at the time. Uh, and he wrote a followup the very next year called, um, oh gosh,

what was the followup called? The first immortal in 1997, uh, which I also have and love and I'm going to be reading next as well. And then he never wrote a book again. Really? No. And, and both were bestsellers and, uh, both were each cited in PC magazine's 20th anniversary survey in 2001 as two of the top 20 top science and technology fiction books of the previous 20 years. And he sold the rights to the truth machine to motion picture

studio, which apparently is being now it's, it's been under development by Morgan Freeman, AKA Nelson Mandela's revelations entertainment forever. So he was not unsuccessful as an author, but never wrote again. And I remember for years, I would always just keep checking to see if he had put out another book cause I love these two books so much. Um, the truth machine. Well, actually they're, they're basically the same story. The, the first immortals will follow up to the truth machine. It's speculative fiction about what would basically happen if, if they were to able to

develop a machine that basically told you without, with a hundred percent certainty, whether someone was lying or telling the truth and how it would change the entire world. And it's written from the of how the idea came about, how it was developed. Um, he's, he's, uh, the author, James Halpert is actually a businessman who's done a bunch of other things, which could be why he doesn't spend his time writing. Cause I'm sure he makes a lot more money doing other stuff. Um, so he writes a lot

about the government aspect of it or how the business was put together. And, uh, there's a lot of intrigue and a lot of really interesting philosophical ideas are thrown around. And he starts every chapter with like, uh, headlines from the time. And it's actually the books themselves are supposedly written by an advanced AI from like 2050. Um, really intriguing speculative fiction. The most interesting part is I thought going like, this is my version of your new podcast. Does it have legs? Would this book

actually have legs basically almost 20 years later as speculative fiction? And it does. It's still really interesting. He starts every chapter with sample headlines of what was going on at that period of time. That part is a little bit off, but still very funny. I mean, he talks about like, you know, various cities getting nuked and the U S becoming a massive powerhouse, you know, we look back at it and kind of laugh a little bit. And a lot of the technology jokes are kind of funny because there was no

Twitter or anything like that. Um, but still it's, it's a really good book. Uh, I'm really enjoying it. I'm only a couple, a couple of chapters away from the end and I can actually recommend it to anybody who's like super into tech, uh, with a grain of salt and knowing that this was written 20 years ago as, as near future fiction and to see what he got right, what he got wrong, besides just the general fact that the story is really interesting. Oh, cool. Okay. So that's it. I mean, uh, and again, it's a mystery why this guy

never wrote another book because I remember both of these books being some of my favorite books of all time. So, um, I'm just looking at the Amazon page and it says customers who bought this also bought Demon by Daniel Suarez, Anthem by Neil Stevenson. So it's, it's definitely in the wheelhouse. Yeah, it's in the wheelhouse just 20 years earlier. Cool. So it's, it's quite intriguing. Awesome. What else you got?

Uh, that's about it right now. That's the book I've gone back to read. So I'm expecting to, uh, have quite a lot after we get to, uh, get through the holidays because I am just going to go in a book frenzy. Yeah. I'm going to destroy my Kindle app while we're, while we're, over the break. I have so much that's piled up that I want to read.

Yeah. I have a lot too. So yeah. And my poor Instapaper app is just going to get, uh, going to get some action too. It's, it's so much lined up. Yeah. So a lot of books for everyone. Yeah. Looking forward to the break and yeah, check out any of those books. And if you have anything that you think we'd like, uh, just drop us a note at podcast at grumpy old geeks.com. We're always looking for new stuff. Definitely. So if you, if you find a cool book and let us know, cause like I said, half the time we're trying to figure out what the hell to read next. So

yeah, it's a lot better than me just like floating around on Amazon's recommendation engine. Give us some stuff. Sweet. A couple episodes ago, we talked about an app that you could take a picture of a key on your iPhone and, and, and the company would send you a physical key later on. Yes. Well on, uh, Al Jazeera America

a couple of days ago, I found an article where a guy has figured out how to do that with his maker bot in his house. So now you can, you can just, you don't even have to send it off. You don't have any accountability for where the key comes from. You can just take a picture of somebody's keys at the bar and break into their house. Pretty much keys are now obsolete. Yeah. So I will be, uh, well, as soon as I'm back in a place that I'm not renting, uh, any place that I own, I'm going to be

installing fingerprint scanners. Oh yeah. Like those aren't fucking hackable. I know. I know. So instead, instead of taking a picture of your key, you take a picture of your beer glass when you go take a leak. Damn it, man. I keep very clean fingers. Uh, what was it? Uh, sneakers, uh, with my identity is my password. Oh yeah. Yeah. Even that was hacked. There's, there's just nothing. Forget it. No, there's nothing you can do about it. But I mean, what are the chances that somebody is going

to have a 3d printer? I don't hang out with people that are that dorky yet. I know a couple of people that have them. I, I, I'd like, I, I think in five years I'd want one. They're not, they're not good enough yet. They're not there yet. And they're, yeah, the resolution is too low and they're too expensive. They're way too expensive right now. But I mean, it's just a matter of time, you know, five, 10 years is going to be commonplace. And yeah, I mean, keys are, are kind of ridiculously old tech anyways. And you know, my dad used to sell security systems. I'm like, how do you make a place burglar proof? He's like, son, there's no such thing. If somebody wants to come in,

they can drive a car through the wall and they're in, you know, there's no such thing. Yeah. So we use keys. We, that's all we got. But even the, the life cycle of the key is, is, is coming to an end. I agree.

No, it's not dead. This time I've just got a short video. It'll be in the show notes. You have to watch it. Guinness has been amazing with their ad campaigns. We've, we've talked about a few of them. This new one is just, it's about a sheepdog and a bunch of drunks. All I'm saying is if you want a funny, funny three minutes, go check it out. And if you've ever actually seen a sheepdog herding on

television, it's excellent. I have, I, I have watched hours of sheepdog herding competitions when I was in Scotland and there's, there's almost nothing like it. It's, you're watching it just out of this morbid fascination of really, it's a dude whistling at a dog for like hours.

Yeah. It makes about as much sense to me as watching golf, but this is a great commercial, really funny. Guinness consistently does a good job with their ads. And if you want to talk about, uh, simplifying your life and having it be enjoyable, I'd like to be in this commercial. Absolutely. Absolutely. This is, this is the life I would like to have. I would not mind being on a, you know, nice highland somewhere and just having a dog force me to go to a bar.

It does keep you away from the titty bars though. That, that, that was a bad dog. Okay. One, one, one complaint. Check it out. Yeah. Candy, candy, candy, candy, candy. I have not seen the show yet, but, uh, given the writeup that I just read, which we posted, uh, in the show notes, um, I have to, this looks like a TV show that I can get a hundred percent behind. It's called Black Mirror. Uh, the only show on TV that truly

understands how we use technology and it's being hailed as kind of like a, a current day twilight zone in terms of creepiness and, you know, just general weirdness and scariness. And it's all about, uh, our current tech and, you know, our cell phones and the internet and blah, blah, blah. And it's an anthology, which I love anthology shows. There are hardly any of them anymore ever. Uh, can't wait. I, I'm so looking forward to this. I realized it's, it's older and it's been out over in,

uh, the UK for quite a long time. And I believe you, Jason, have already seen some of them. I've seen them all. They are, it's, it's a couple of years old. Uh, they're, they've done the first two seasons. It's three episodes per season, very much like Sherlock and in, in much of British television. Um, I would, I would actually categorize it more like night gallery than I would. It's, it's kind of a cross between night gallery and twilight zone. Okay. If you want

to go into that vein, uh, they are unbelievable. They're so good. They nail everything on the head. I mean, once you watch the first one, you're just going to be like, holy shit. Um, I, I seriously, I don't want to, I don't want to talk about the actual episodes because I don't want to spoil any of them. Right. They are all standalone episodes and they are all brilliantly written. Excellent. I cannot wait. I mean, there, I, I have not been like, even with Sherlock,

the middle, the middle episodes of Sherlock, as far as I'm concerned, there are only four good episodes of Sherlock with, uh, this show. There are six, six excellent episodes. So check it out. Um, if you like to troll the backwaters of the internet, you can find this on the torrents.

Um, Oh, I'm going to have to, because it's apparently only airing here on direct TV, which I do not have. So, um, now that I know it's out there and again, we've talked about this before, uh, it's a world now. Can you guys please make things available? So, you know, make it available and I'd pay for it. I cannot, I, this is another thing that I cannot watch legally at the moment, but I need to see. So actually, I think you can on Amazon prime.

Okay. Check out, check out Amazon prime. I will have to check that out right now. I know this article just says that it's going to be airing on direct TV. So hopefully it is on Amazon prime. If that's the case, we'll update it in the show notes by the time you listen to this. Uh, and I will be happily watching it. So yeah, I think it's been recommended to me on Amazon prime, which I just finally paid for the full boat on. I've been on Niall Kennedy's, uh, plan for 10 years now, uh, since, since we worked at Technorati and

I finally decided to pay for it. So now I, now I am a full prime member and can, man, they got like a hundred thousand books or 10,000 books or something you can borrow. You get a free, you get a free book a month. Pretty much. Plus all the videos. So besides, I mean, it's worth, it's worth it for the shipping alone, but now with all the other stuff you get, wow. Yeah. And your tip, your, your tip that you sent to me on Facebook with an

Apple TV and an iPad, just shoving the video straight to the TV. I was sold. I was sold. Let's talk about that for one second really quickly, just because I'm so impressed that I actually sent you a tech tip. You didn't know if you are, if you have Apple TV and you have an iPad and you're bitching about how there's no, um, Amazon prime app on the Apple TV, there's a little button on your iPad that throws it to the TV. So

yes, the airplay button, just, just ship the video out. So that's a, and yeah, it totally works. It works flawlessly. Yeah. So that's great. So that also, yeah, that also brings me to the Apple TV. Everybody should have an Apple TV just because they are so damn useful. It's unbelievably useful. I mean, um, I'm going to be having a little holiday party here on Sunday. I've got the Apple TV downstairs. I've got my music system upstairs. Uh, I, you know, have my little playlist boom. It, you know, it'll play it

up here. It's synced perfectly downstairs. Everybody's hearing the same music and that's just for music. Uh, like we said, anything on Amazon prime, you can throw there. You watch your Netflix, you, anything that's in your iTunes collection. Uh, the Apple TV is just the perfect compliment if you've been sucked in and you've got the iPads and you're all Apple anyways. Yeah. I mean, well, I, I, I'm not trying to be an Apple fanboy, but I, I'm all Mac here, but that's no, no surprise or anything new. But, um, Jay Goldman made a tweet the other yesterday where he uses

the Apple TV with his TV at the office and uses the TV monitor as a secondary display just for his RDO music. Right. Which is perfect. Cause where, where I'm at during the day from my office, it's the TV is set up to a full sound system. So I'm going to use that for just playing music and it's, it's great. So now my show is, this is, this is eye candy this time instead of your candy. Um, I am in love

with almost human. I really show. I love it. The, the, uh, the commercials do nothing for me. Watch the show, man. It's really good. I mean, it's really well written. The, they do do way too many callbacks to blade runner, like the future, the future world that they're living in. Yeah. Way too many clear umbrellas. Um, but for the most part, it's, I love it. I think it's spot on the way that the main

character who plays bones in the star Trek movies, who is British by the way, and has an American accent again. Um, I can't remember his name, but I love that guy. He was so good in the star Trek movies and, and pretty much everything I've ever seen him in. Right. Um, look it up. IMDb it. Um, he's great. The writing's great. The effects are great. The guy who plays his Android partner. Fantastic. I've got no complaints about it. I have watched all five episodes so far and I love the show.

Excellent. Well, I guess I'll have to take a look. I'm going to have a lot of free time. Thank God. So, uh, another thing I want to throw out, my friend, uh, Alana, uh, she runs a newsletter, a biweekly newsletter for fan TV. It's just basically called, basically called I dream of TV. Um, it's, it's really fun. Just go sign up if you're a, if you're a TV fan, you know, it's like water cooler talk. So I don't have anybody to talk to about most of my TV viewing habits. And she covers a lot of the stuff that I watch

and I found some new stuff from her newsletter. Yeah. It's just fun. I just want to, I want to give her a little press. So check it out. Excellent. And I did, I'll throw in one thing that's actual ear candy since it is the holiday season. And we all know that, you know, you have your Christmas standards and then you have your horrible, you know, Christmas albums from Mariah Carey or Beyonce or whatever. Uh, you want to throw in your, you're like us and you're kind of like an eighties punk rock new wavy kid and you need a good song to throw into that Christmas playlist. Uh, the

waitresses Christmas wrapping. I love this song. You only hear it this time of year, every year. It's an absolutely fantastic, cool, like early eighties Christmas song. Uh, the waitresses were like kind of basically a girl group from the early eighties. Their big hit was, I know what boys like, which you probably remember immediately. Uh, this is their Christmas song. It's great. And, uh, you know, break up that monotony of, of absolutely horrible Christmas stuff and do not by any means, listen to the cover done by the spice girls. Okay. Listen to the

original by the waitresses Christmas wrapping added to your playlist. All right. We'll put it in the show notes. I've got, I've got one, but I'm going to save it till we're a little closer to Christmas. Okay. Um, it'll be in the show next week. I think it's called Santa. You fucking cunt. It's a beautiful, beautiful song. Well, I'm glad you're waiting on that one then. All right.

Ho, ho, ho, ho. Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho. Ba, humbug. Well, that's too strong. Cause it is my favorite holiday. But all this year's been a busy blur. Don't think I have the energy. Grab in my already mad rush. Just cause it's

tis the season. The perfect gift for me would be completions. And connections live from last year's

getting back to the douchery of San Francisco, a gentleman named Greg Gopman, whose company called angel hack, who, uh, runs hackathons, which I don't know what that means. Um, has, has talked about, he, he made it to Valleywag this week with, uh, his comments about the human filth of the

homeless in San Francisco. Uh, yes. I think he should look in a mirror personally. And, uh, that's the take the Valleywag has on it as well. Uh, little douchebags with too much time and money, uh, talking about why it's unsafe to walk down market street and get yelled at by somebody who has less than you do. Go die in a fire. You little shit. That's all. That's pretty much what I got to say about him.

Yeah. We've talked about this a couple of times recently. There was another douchebag that thought that Silicon Valley should basically make themselves their own country. Uh, you, you fuckers up there, you self titled pricks. I can't stand you people. It's getting to that point now. I'm just like, I used to, I used to defend them, but now it's like, what the hell are you thinking? Yeah. I know it's a, it's a small town. You get to get a little

insular up there and you think that you're really, you know, your own world, but you're just starting to sound like a bunch of dipshits. Really? You really are. And it's, it's an interesting thing to living in Venice beach recently because we're becoming a Silicon beach. Basically a lot of these companies are starting up their offices down here and given, and we've always had homeless, lots of homeless in Venice. That's just a given, uh, given the choice between hanging out with some of the homeless and some of these hipster douchebags that work for these companies that walk around

this area. I'd take the homeless anytime. Oh, hell yeah. They get better stories. Yep. Seriously. Now there's another thing that's going on. This comes from blogging LA, which was, you know, little site that I found it a long time ago. I'm still going. So my buddy Frasgo over there, um, put up a post about a protest that's going on in LA because there's a proposed ban on feeding the homeless in public. What the fuck are you people doing now? That's what I want to know.

I leave for, I leave for six months and now you just can't even give a homeless guy a sandwich. What the fuck? I wasn't able to really delve into this one too much. Um, they're obviously not banning, uh, you know, soup kitchens, that sort of thing. I think that, um, mostly they were worried about, there's like one or two areas, particularly in downtown LA where people were just kind of setting up shop to pass out food, which is great. Uh, except they started to get so overrun and so

gigantic. People started to freak out. And of course we have to over legislate because this is America. We can't just, we're incapable of being reasonable about anything. Yeah, this is, this is embarrassing. This is like seriously embarrassing. It is. It's not a good thing, but welcome to LA.

Uh, that's why I left. Um, but I'll be back soon anyway. Now let's talk about, uh, let's continue along the douchebag, uh, continuum as it were. This would be the, the rainbow universe douchebaggy. There's a thing called the wealth badge. It's it's the because I can badge.

Yes. It is a 30 cent pen that these people are selling for $5,000 that people that own lots of, it's honestly looking at the pictures of these people, they are children of rich people who are entitled little shits. Um, we introduce you to our new product, one and only of its kind.

You are not buying just a badge. You are buying a symbol of your wealth. Um, well, it is square, so I hope they show it up their ass and, uh, choke on it. Um, but they, they're, they're limited edition. Um, there's a fame gallery on this website, which is at wealth badge.com. Um, yes, it's called the because I can badge, but 25% of all income in December will be donated to the American red cross to help with, uh, people of the typhoon in the Philippines.

How generous of you, I would very much like to believe that this is completely fake. I have enough faith in humanity still that I'm just going to believe that this is like everybody that's out on Venice Beach shooting their viral videos, which are all made up. This has got to be a fake made up website. I, I hope so. I don't think so. Look at it. There are, they're only selling a hundred of them. Uh, there are 41, uh, sold already. Yes. So that's, uh, 41,

41 times five is 200 grand. Not bad. No, not bad. So if I wish, I wish I would have, I wish I would have thought of it because taking money from rich, stupid fucks, uh, I'm down with that. But if you look at the, look at the fame gallery and it's a bunch of kids. Yeah. Yeah. That's that on segments. It's just making me, it's making me think it's fake and some college kids set it up, but, uh, God, I hope so. I really do. I, I, I, I don't want to spend the time to do the

search on it to find out who made this, but Jesus Christ. I think it's probably one rich kid selling to his other rich kid friends. Probably. Yeah. Yeah. I think this, this might have come from, uh, was it Beverly Hills 90210 like high school over there, but yeah, it's a 30, it's a 30 cent pin with, uh, a login too. So you can log in to hang out with the lucky owners. Yeah. Good times. Wow. That's all I got. Wow. So to, uh,

to wrap up the douchery, let's talk, let's talk about the, this is a new term I've never heard called virality mills. Does Facebook think virality mills are the new content farms and that we're talking about the buzz feeds and the up or these here, listicles and other crap like that. Yeah. Yeah.

So I, I, I like the term virality mill. It's a cool term. Yeah. It, yeah. It reminds me of puppy mill, which are a bunch of other assholes who make money off of things they shouldn't. Um, and this comes back to our, our give proper attribution and these sites wouldn't exist, you know? Yeah, exactly. It's, it's stolen content, uh, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. People repurposing other things to get their advertising money. Um, you know, it's, this is what the internet

is now. It's, it's become this. I would, I would like to replace virality mill with douchebag intermediary. That's, that's, that's my new term. Douchebag intermediary sites. We should start that. Oh man. Douche worthy. Douche, douche worthy. Oh shit. Now I got to buy another domain, you asshole.

Well, grab douche feed while you're at it too. Douche feed. No, I think douche worthy is better. Well, we got to do both. I mean, they're different things. Douche, you know, douche feed is going to be listicles about douches and douche worthy. It'll be douchey videos. Okay. You sold me. Yeah, there you go. We've just rebuilt the internet. No problem. And for $5,000, you can get in early on our club and come to the pen. Now I got to go spend

20 bucks. So as we mentioned earlier in the show, if you would like to give us a hand to pay for these ridiculously stupid microphones that we have to use every week or the bandwidth or just buy us a beer, uh, please head over to tug yards.com or you can go to tugboatyards.com slash GOG. But tug yards is easier and funnier. Yes. We'll be adding a new, uh, new level. Um, we'll be a grumpy old geeks pin for bargain based price. Men at $2,500.

Mm hmm. Yeah. And, and for the $5,000 version, you just buy the damn show. That's it. We'll send you the mics, Oliver. We'll send you the mics. We'll send you the logins. It's all yours. I'll send you some audio files for all our intermediary bits and go for it, man. Take it over. Hell for that much. We'll just put Fogarty in box and send them to you and he'll do all your voiceovers no matter what. We can ship them like the Stig. No problem.

Uh, I, I do want to say, uh, hats off to tugboat yards because when we got the domain, you, you put out a tweet that we got it and they, they did retweet it. They got the joke. Yeah. Good times. Fun guys. Uh, yeah. Check it out. It's a cool little way for us to try to, uh, extort money out of you guys to help us pay for what we do. And thank you very much for, uh, for doing that.

And also check out some of the other stuff that's on there. There's a lot of cool projects in there. They're, they're growing their roster of, uh, people doing cool stuff that, uh, you know, could use a, could use a buck or two. That's right. So think of it as your internet tip jar. Forget Kickstarter. Just go, just go kick in a few bucks. Exactly. Uh, and we're sliding into the holidays here. So I'm, I'm hoping everybody's having a grand old time doing all their shopping and whatnot. Uh, just a couple of notes about what we'll be doing for

the holidays. We are going to go ahead and do a regular full show next week, uh, which will be the 20th. So you'll have something for your holiday travel listening pleasure. Uh, the week after that, we were just going to have a little short ditty for you guys that we hope you enjoy. Um, the week after new year's, we are actually going to take off and take a full week off. And then there's going to be something a little special for you guys the week after that, which we will talk about later. We will. Okay, cool. Tell me when we're talking

about it. I'll be in. Well, okay. We can talk about it now. Isn't that when you're going to be here in LA and we're going to do our in-person drinking show? I am coming to LA. We're going to go do an in-person show again. It's going to, it's been way too long. It has been way too long. So that one will be a bit of a mess, but it should be fun. It should be fun. And I, I'm thinking we should do a live show at Finn's just me and me, you and a table at Finn's and whoever wants to come on by can come on by. All right, maybe we'll do that. So that could be the something special. We'll talk about planning that and we'll get that information

out to you guys soon. So thank you for listening and we'll see you guys all next week. Happy holidays. 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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