51: Conscious Ungrumping

Jason DeFillippo. Brian Schulmeister. Brian Schulmeister. Brian Schulmeister.

Happy anniversary, Brian. Happy anniversary. One year. One year. It's pretty crazy. I remember when we said, oh, let's do ten of these, and if nothing's going on by then, we'll just stop. Yeah, we're idiots. Yeah, we're still going. I have no idea why, but we're still going. You know, it's a conscious ungrumping. It is, definitely. You had to explain that to me because I don't really give a flying fuck about celebrity news, so I had no idea

what was going on this week with, who was it, Gwyneth Paltrow? Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin from Coldplay have sadly, well, disconnected. I don't remember the exact terminology they're using, but yeah, that's a big pop culture one. I gave myself a pat on the back for the title of this episode, and you were like, I don't understand. Yeah, I'm like, huh?

Derp. But we are not ungrumping. We're one year in, and we're going to keep going. Yeah, this is going to be an especially grumpy episode, so I think I've got, Jason's got his groove back. Okay. It could be the withdrawal from narcotics from the thing that I was dealing with, but yeah, it feels like I got ants under my skin, so this is going to be a fun one.

Okay. Although I would like to start out with an apology to Jordan Cooper, and I slammed him last weekend because I said he didn't have a URL on his Twitter, and honestly, I really couldn't give a flying fuck about his feelings, but I was more upset with myself for not catching it because I was looking at Twitter on mobile. On Twitter on mobile, you just get the pagination dots, and so you have to know that they're there for disclosure of more information, so you have to swipe. Stupid fucking UX decision to not have something else to tell you that

there's more information available. Putting those dots there is something fine if it's a slideshow and it just tells you what page you're on, but as an indicator of information that, hey, there's more stuff here, like more pages of stuff. I've been in this business for 20 years, and I missed it, so it's like, why even put it there? So fuck you, Twitter. That's all I got to say.

Well, I've just given up in general on most of the social networks on ever finding anything because they change it all the time anyways. Facebook just changed. Just changed it right when I was checking my things before we started this. There's a whole new UI, and I'm like, oh, fuck you. I know. They just do it like every month now, it feels like. It's ridiculous.

And the text is getting smaller and smaller every time. My eyes are terrible. More room for ads. Except I don't see the ads. All I see is small shit, because I have the ads turned off. Anyway, how's the house? Have you got it like all Bill Gates' mansioned up yet? Or was it antitrust? The way you walk in the room and the walls change to your favorite artwork? We should have that by now, right?

You'd think we'd have all that by now. We're two weeks in, I guess, now being here. I figure at this point, I'm doing about half the amount of boxes every week, much like the hare and the tortoise. I will never, ever be done with boxes, but if I keep going at this rate, it'll be half again next week and half again the week after that. And just trying to upgrade little items. You just think this stuff shouldn't be that difficult, changing out handles on a

shower or something like that. Everything, everything takes three times as long, two trips to Home Depot. There are no fucking standards for anything. I'm ready for Nest just to rebuild an entire house. They got to move beyond just the fire alarm and the thermostat. I want them to build everything because that stuff has standards and it makes sense and it's new. Damn it.

Okay. I am ready to have an entire house made out of Nest. Or just build a Nest. I don't know. Oh, yeah. But it's fine. I love my neighborhood and I'm learning quite a lot about houses and how they work. I am so sorry.

Yeah. It's stuff I really never needed to know. Yeah. And, you know, it's just going to make you poor. You're not going to get rich off of that type of thing. No, no, no. So what are you going to do? What are you going to do? So this week researchers came out with proof that the brain games that we like so much don't do a damn thing.

Yeah. So, you know, Lumosity claims to be bolstered by the science of neuroscience, but now science has proved that the science of neuroscience doesn't actually do anything. Or I'm sorry, neuroplasticity. Neuroscience is actually a real thing, which is what proved that neuroplasticity doesn't work.

Yeah. And, you know, this goes back and forth. It's just like the food chart. You know, next week there will be proof that it does exist again and then go back and forth. There's an article that I found that goes all the way back to like April 2013 that said it was bunk.

Right. And, you know, people forget about it. Then a new wave of apps comes out. Everybody buys it. Then another study comes out. Then everybody drops it. And it's just, it's almost like, was it planned obsolescence? Like they want to get debunked so they can start selling to the new crowd of people that come up. Yeah. That does seem to be the way it works. I mean, just speaking for myself, who is now as of next month, I'll have done Lumosity for one year straight. It was fun. It gave, it added

a little bit of structure to my day. Do I feel smarter or better or faster at anything except for the games that they kept throwing me? No. So, you know, I didn't do an empirical study. Maybe I should have taken like a speed test and IQ test and all that from a third party before I started and then take it again, you know, next month. But just objectively, I'd say it doesn't fucking work for shit. Yeah. And, and, uh, and that's the hard part is like, how do you, how do you actually do a good scientific study about this? Because

there's so many variables, unless they lock you in a room, you know, for two to six months and just feed you the same thing, let you do the same thing every day and then just test that. It's almost an impossible thing to test. Um, and the one thing that I was thinking of, cause I, I was doing a fit brain for a little bit and it's fun, you know, I actually, I just enjoy doing it. I, I honestly am not getting any smarter from it, so it doesn't matter, but I enjoy it. It's, it's, you know, fun thing to do while you're waking up in the morning, like while you're, while you're having your eggs, it just passes the time instead

of reading. Yeah, exactly. Um, we've talked about, um, you know, like how much cognitive juice you have to get through the day. And as the day goes on, you know, the more you think, the more you spend and then like the harder it is to make decisions and you make poor decisions, which is why we all go to the bar in the evening and not in the morning. Um, speak for yourself. So, uh, so I'm just wondering if these games actually like cause more harm because you're actually burning the fuel first thing in the morning

and it's like, you know, you see what I'm saying? It, it starts draining you before you even get started. So it, you got me? Yeah. See where I'm coming from? Okay. I got you. I'm just, I'm just wondering, I'm just wondering there if that's, uh, I don't know if I necessarily subscribe to the, we have a finite amount of juice per day theory, but, um, I can see where you might come from that way.

Yeah. I'll tell you what, I can, I, I have about four to five hours of good solid programming in me a day. It doesn't, doesn't really matter when I do them, but that's what I got. And I can just tell where on the spectrum I am. If I've had like a rough morning, that four to five hours just sucks. It's terrible work. But if I do it first thing in the morning when I've got, you know, when the, when the tank is full, great, great stuff. I'm, I'm all happy with it, which is why I program in the mornings and go to the, go to the bar in the evenings because I'm depleted by then. So.

Right. Okay. Yeah. I got you on that. So I mean, basically I agree with you. Lumosity for me was a fun thing to do every morning. Um, it does, you know, it, it's better than fucking reading, you know, people.com or anything I suppose, but, uh, I'm not going to re up when my subscription ends. I'm, I don't think I'm going to join up with any other one. I know we had a kind of put out a call to action to our listeners to recommend some, some of the newer ones that are out there or anything else that anyone has tried. I think I'm done with these games at least for a while. Uh, I

don't really see the point. Uh, yeah. And, and they also did come out with some stuff about meditation with, you know, like the mantra based meditations, uh, which also brings me back to like self-help and affirmations, which I just cannot stand. Um, which is great. This means that they don't do anything. So go about your day, do something else. They did say that, um, mindfulness meditation definitely is proven to reduce stress and, uh, and, uh, improve memory retention. So again, subjectively, I, I've been doing that for, for months now and

it's, it's definitely helped with my stress levels. Absolutely. But my chanting every morning of we're going to have a successful podcast, we're going to have a successful podcast. That has done fuck all. So, so anybody, anyways, uh, when is, as soon as anybody hears about the class action lawsuit against Lumosity, uh, someone email me and let me know so I can join in on that one and get some of my 70 bucks back. Excellent. So, um, speaking of stupid shit, uh, we talked about the, this is a

Trent Reznor song, uh, a couple of podcasts ago when he, when the guy first kind of put it up on SoundCloud and it was very funny and incredibly well done and you know, genius parody. Uh, and as I'll do, do all things on the internet these days, completely forgotten about a month later, except he spent the last month making the Trent Reznor video parody where he basically apes. Well, to be honest, he has an ape. He doesn't do any aping of any recent Trent Reznor video, but he certainly does everything from back in the downward spiral

day. Um, and he put that up on YouTube and has the song up on iTunes for purchase now and he's basically just taken what was a funny little cool joke and beat it into the fucking ground. Well, he's milking it. Why not? He's milking it. You know, I don't blame him for it. I just, I thought the video was a waste of time because I'd already heard the song and I had, you know, the song was funny. The video was an easy one, you know, an easy target, which probably took a thousand times more work than the song did. Oh yeah,

for sure. Um, so I, I hope he makes a few bucks off of it just for his time, but he really should have just kind of sold the song on iTunes and gone with it or done the video first. If he'd have done the video and the song at the same time, it'd have been, it'd have been perfect. Yeah. But, uh, he does what everybody tries to do now, which is you get a little bit of fame and you just milk it, milk it, milk it until everybody, that's what you have to do. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's what you got to do. Milk it, you know? I mean, what would we call it? We just called it humping it before, you know, in some

of our early episodes when you just, you got to work it and work it. This guy, you know, he saw something, somebody gave him some coin or just some, you know, hits or whatever. And he's like, ah, I can make something out of this. I can put it on YouTube and cause they pay and, you know, get some advertising money out of it. I don't know if it will, but I actually, I tend to doubt it, but we'll see. You know, I think good luck. Uh, just stop it. Don't make it. Don't, we don't, we don't need you going around as a Trent Reznor and hooking up with weird Al and okay. You're, you're coming

up with something new. Yeah. Come up with something new and, and, or just write your own damn song. I don't want to see the next one to be, this is a KMF damn song or this is a ministry song or whatever the hell is here to do next. That's why we have weird Al. Exactly. We got one. He's still around. So this week we both got the same email from our old show notes provider, Mammoth.

Yep. Uh, the email subject was just simply something new is coming. Like, okay, I'll click on it. See what's what, um, in the email is just a stock photo of a MacBook air on somebody's lap with, you know, blurred out background in the text. Hello, your name. We've been working on something you'll like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Stay tuned.

Yeah. Fuck you. Yeah. You made me open an email for no reason to tell me that you've been working. And actually, you know, this was a, a good product that we use for a long time. It just didn't quite meet exactly our needs. Um, I forgot as per usual to, to unsubscribe to it ages ago when we, when we left the service, uh, if you were sending me an email about here's the brand new thing that we've launched, it's pretty awesome. Take a look at it. I would have, but something new is coming with

your standard kind of stock photo image. I unsubscribed. Bye-bye. I don't care anymore. Yeah. And honestly, we just, our workflow changed and their, their site changed. So there was an intersection of stuff that just didn't work anymore. Cause I liked the guys there, you know, they were cool guys. They worked with us a couple of times to do some stuff that we wanted them to do. But this is just, this is annoyance where it's like, tell me at least, you know what, if something is coming, give me a feature list. I got an email from the one password guys,

agile software two days ago, telling me about the cool stuff that's coming up in their new version for iOS. And I'm like, cool. I want to see it. Then they had an animated GIF of the, you know, the new lock screen and all the other stuff. And I'm like, that's great. Now I'm looking forward to it. Yeah. This was like, Hey, we've been working well. You damn well better have, you know, that's where you kind of get into these weird levels of what do you use for communication for what purposes? I would have been okay if they like posted that on their Twitter or posted that on their Facebook, but to do a mass mail to all of your core customers

with just nothing. No, that's not cool. Well, then again, we didn't actually pay anything for it. So I don't know if we're actually, I think we're just a user, not a customer. Well, that's true. But you get what I'm saying. Yeah. Don't do it. Don't do it. No. Uh, when I was stuck on the train the other day, I just needed something to do to get my mind off the clackety clack of the rails. Yes.

And I found these old scans that I, uh, had of this box of prodigy software, one version 1.1 that I found in a thrift shop. So I threw those up on my website last night just for, for shits and giggles. So I'll put a link in the show notes to them, but go check it out. Yes. I was actually never on prodigy. I was my first, that was my first like mass service. Cause I got, uh, I had a Sears credit card and they gave me a, uh, a free membership and it was like right when they launched. So there was nobody there, but I stayed on it almost to the bitter end.

Yeah. I talked to a lot of housewives about Broadway musicals and, and Bob and I talked about video games to other nerds. That was about it. That's about all there was to do. Yeah. It was fun though. It was like the first massive, you know, massive system like that. I was on besides BBSs. Yeah. Yeah. I was doing BBSs and then I was just, uh, I basically, you know, when I was in college, we were lucky enough to basically just all get hooked up, uh, right away. So I didn't actually need to subscribe to anything until, until right after graduation. And I did sign up for,

with AOL for a while, which is funny cause they were on the, uh, they had that guy on the, for the today show is doing a throwback Thursdays now because apparently this is just going to become a universal thing that we can no longer escape from. And they had the guy that did the voice for you've got mail files done and goodbye was on the show, which was kind of cool. I was like, Hey, that's pretty funny. It is pretty funny. I hadn't heard files gone in a long time. Yeah, seriously. Uh, I loved AOL. I was on it, you know, right after it. I was

like on both of those for a while. I didn't do CompuServe. CompuServe was for snobs and I couldn't afford it. Yeah. So I did, uh, yeah. Prodigy and AOL. Oh, the old days. I miss them. The old days. And now we're all on time Warner or Comcast as part of my, my morning habit as the coffee,

the lumosity, which will be going away. Um, I also load up my iTunes and start downloading all my podcasts for the day. Uh, as you all well know, I am a fan of Adam Carolla and his podcast is always first up in the morning. Unfortunately today I only got a 55 second commercial for a podcast, which then, yeah, just a commercial. Yeah. It's a commercial for a podcast. He's doing the patent troll thing. We talked about that. It's actually really, it's quite important and, uh, I believe

in it completely, but, uh, I hate the fact that, uh, at least they still gave you this thing for free. He did the radio head model, which is, you know, this particular podcast was a fundraising or show for the patent troll lawsuit litigation that shit that he's dealing with. Um, so you get a, uh, the regular podcast download is just a 52nd go to fund anything.com slash patent troll and you can get the show and you can either donate money right there or he'll still let you basically just have

it for free, which is a nice move except for the fact that at least for me and I believe for you as well, uh, the link didn't work for a couple hours. Yeah. Uh, the first time I tried it, it went to Google drive, which, uh, you know, is come on. And it said, yeah, too many people have downloaded this file. Uh, sorry. Uh, uh, Corolla is like the master of the podcasting universe and he hires

monkeys to run his technology department. I'm sorry. I'm saying it. I have seen their websites. He's always bitching about how they can't get anything done. Right. And it's like, this is, I mean, okay. You want to spend money on stuff, Adam, you want to buy nice cars, do something, hire somebody with a fucking brain to run your technical division. If you're going to be running around screaming about how you're the biggest podcast in the entire world, Guinness Book of Records, Senso and everything, and get some fucking tech people going on over there. Fuck, hire us. And then just put us on your

network. I'm not working for that guy. Sorry. No way. There's he's, I'm sure he's cheap as hell. That's why he doesn't have a decent staff. And B, no, ain't no way. If you want to go for it, be my guest. I have this thing called, um, uh, I'm trying to go for stress free and that would not be stress free. That's true. It would not be stress free at all.

No. And he goes a thousand miles an hour and you know, like I, I don't have that kind of stamina and I can't walk. So fuck it. No. If you want to go work for him, be my guest, but somebody needs to go work for him because he's, it's a shit show over there. Seriously. Oh man. Sorry. Agreed. I gotta take a breath from that one. Um, so why don't you recommend a place he could have been hosting his podcast? Well, it's not, you know, he could have, he could have put it on S3 like everybody else does. Amazon S3, uh, which is where half my

stuff is. Um, and thank God, thank God Amazon is out there because they, they just knocked their prices down again for the 42nd time. It's like every time you turn around, they're getting cheaper and cheaper. Yeah. There's, there's still other and, but there, I mean, there's still a little pricey if you're going for, oh, I don't know, reliable commercial grade hosting. Um, if you want to go out of the box, you know, shared server, uh, type of thing, you know, where you're, you go to your media temples, you pay 20 bucks and you

can put everything you want on it and it never loads. Uh, fine. But you know, for enterprise grade hosting, AWS is fantastic. I've been using them since they, since the beginning. Um, I've tried some of the other cloud stuff, uh, rack space in general and they're a nightmare to deal with when it comes to support and just getting everything spun up. AWS, you do it yourself. Uh, it's got APIs for everything. Um, I just, if you can't do it on AWS, you

just can't do it. You know, it just makes building, you know, things like Netflix possible just cheaply. I love it. Oh man. So I don't know. I'm just happy. I'm happy. It's more money in my pocket. Good for you. No, it's a good, it's a good service. I actually really need to get a lot of my stuff moved over there at some point. I've just been way too lazy and yeah, it just hasn't happened yet. Um, yeah, you still actually host on like commodity

hardware and shit, don't you? Yeah, I do. Yeah. Yeah. I know. I know, but it still works. So, and if it ain't broke, don't fix it right now. Well, I've seen your stuff. Some of it is broken. I mean, you're making it so much harder for the NSA to just go in and dip and pull out, you know, whatever they want. I know, I know I should, I should really just make it easier for everyone. Um, speaking of making it easier, guess what went away and

we've been yelling about since pretty much we started the podcast since day one, since day one, I've been screaming about this. Plus I've also been not just publicly screaming about it. I've been screaming about it privately to all my clients who have refused to listen as well. Ditto, ditto, ditto. But guess what everyone? No more freebies on Facebook for brands.

It's over. It's gone. Yep. Everybody's been talking about this. Uh, I think eat 24 put out a blog post today saying it's a, it's you, not us type of thing. Yeah, it was cute, but annoying. It's cute and annoying. And I'll, I'll talk about that in a second because it kind of pissed me off. But yes, uh, we knew it was coming as soon as they, as soon as they introduced the newsfeed, if you extrapolated far enough out into the future, this is what was going to happen. Once

they took control of what you could see, then you were hostage. You're flat out hostage. And now they've even buried with this new look and feel, they've actually buried the switch to, uh, most recent in timeline, which means when they switch it, it's harder to notice. You won't see it like it used to be at the top and you could see on the, on the web view, not the mobile view. Mobile view always defaults back to the shitty ass newsfeed. Um, so, but yeah, yeah. So a recent study just

found that the, uh, that basically brand posts have dropped from reaching 12% of the audience that you have, say somebody likes your brand. Uh, so most posts that you were making in the past just reached only 12%, which is pathetic to begin with. And it's dropped down to just 6% and it's going to go lower and lower and lower. At the end of the day, you want to use Facebook for your brand? You're going to have to start paying to publicize every single post.

Don't do it. We've been screaming about this for ages. We've been saying how important your website is. All you should be doing is pointing back to your website from social networks, but nobody wanted to listen and guess. And it's just, it's over now. It's over. You cannot, your, your Facebook page is meaningless.

See, and here's the, here's where Facebook is, is, you know, not thinking in the longterm. The brands helped make Facebook what it was by driving them, giving them free traffic, putting their logo in the ads, everything, sending them all the people. And, uh, yeah, well now that the people aren't going to be there, they're going to lose all that free advertising.

People are already getting tired of Facebook, have been getting tired of it for ages and it's just going to flip it on its head. And you know, it could be, it, that could be the inflection point where things start to go straight down for Facebook because all the, the brands are going to start pulling support for them. Well, Facebook is definitely going to have a rough time of it because brands are going to disappear. Um, they're just going to not bother with the using Facebook anymore as they should. I don't necessarily think that Facebook in and of itself

will become more useless for the end user. It's going to be even better for me because all I ever really used Facebook for in the first place was to keep in touch with my friends. I could give a shit about brands. So, yeah, but you're, you're smart and you know what to do with it. Um, you're not the normal use case. So, so yeah, that's, that's kind of gone. And, uh, I don't know, I guess I feel mostly bad for all those companies and all those, uh, minimum wage and

under workers in Sri Lanka or wherever that we discovered almost all the likes were coming from anyways, cause that's, that's a dead business now. Definitely. Yeah. So that, uh, eat 24, uh, letter that they wrote, the thing that pissed me off about it was it, it had this whiff of entitlement, like, you know, Facebook owed them something.

Yeah. And that wasn't the annoying aspect of it. It was like, you, you knew this, you knew you were getting something for free. You knew it was going away. Study after study talked about the changes and now you're going to whine about it. Yeah. And by the way, who the fuck is eat 24? Exactly. I don't know. So I actually, I think I'm pretty sure that's the app that I talked about last week where I got, did I talk about that app? No, I, maybe I didn't talk about that. It was the only way I could get food when I was in the Valley and I didn't have anybody

to bring me anything. So I got their app and it like hooks together, um, uh, restaurants that deliver in your neighborhood to get them to bring you stuff. And you just sign up and pay on the website and food shows up. Yeah. Nothing actually new. They don't do anything that I couldn't have done by calling the restaurant.

So, yeah. Well, somebody spent an awful lot of time writing this post cause it's incredibly long and it's trying to be Mimi and they have no photo attribution on any of the pictures and it's a fuck you eat. Yeah, I know. Cause they kind of bitch about how they say Facebook is stealing their content and then not delivering it to the people that want it. But they've stole almost every bit. They didn't make any of these images. They stole every single one of these, everyone, no attribution. Good job. Eat 24. Awesome. Way to nail your

point by doing the exact same thing. Oh, I actually, you know, since we were talking about Facebook, I will come back to the ages and stuff in a second that I want to, I would definitely want to talk about this, but there's also the anger and shock this week about, um, Facebook buying, uh, what the hell? Oculus Rift. Oculus Rift. Yes. This entire story is people just continue to shock and surprise me and I do nothing but laugh. I can't believe that people

are upset about this and surprised. So Oculus Rift was the, it was Kickstarter to build, to build these VR goggles and people paid for the Kickstarter. And then some guy, the guy who did it, sold it to Amazon. I mean, to Facebook. Yeah. And it's like, uh, okay, you know what? Good for him. Yeah. That's kind of the point. He made $2 billion off the deal. Good for him. Yeah. And the only thing that I think is funny is John Carmack had, had just left, uh, ID or id, whatever you want to call it to go be the CTO

of this company. So I'm wondering if he's kicking himself right now or, uh, cashing a check, but I think, I think he was probably already. Yeah. So yeah, it's just funny. You know, it's everybody keeps getting mad. This stuff keeps happening over and over again. People, Zach Braff, we kickstarted your movie. How dare you sell it to distribution? Well, cause that's what people do. Yeah, seriously.

And you don't get a piece of it. You're not in a fucking investor. You give money. That's it. End of story. Yeah. You know, sorry guys. I, I, I was kind of bummed cause it looked really cool and I wanted to try it sometime, but it's going to go sit enough in a Facebook, you know, a locker for ages and I don't think anything good is going to come of it now. So we'll see. Yeah. We'll see what they end up doing with it. Probably nothing. Oh man. I'm worn

out. I'm worn out from that one. I'm worn out. It's cause I'm old. You know, I'm, we keep talking about the, you know, the ageism thing and I'm feeling it cause I'm old. Yeah. Uh, there's a really good article in new Republic this week, uh, called Silicon Valley's brutal ageism that I just recommend. Uh, honestly, I'm just gonna put it in the show notes. If you're interested in this kind of thing, read it because it is one of the best articles

so far on what it's like. And here's the thing now, now that I've, I've, we've talked about this a couple of times and I see these people that are all, you know, we're getting, you know, um, people, people aren't hiring us. They're not giving us VC because we're old and blah, blah, blah. Fuck off, get off your ass and go do it without them. That's it. I'm done with it. You know, I don't know why I've been in this damn maudlin hole

of, Oh, poor us. We're old. Nobody's going to hire us. Nobody hired us when we fucking started and we, we built everything up by, you know, we bootstrapped it up. We made it then. We're smarter than they are now. So fucking let's go do it again. I got no problem with it. I don't feel that, you know, I, I see this outside of the realm of my own life. I see the ageism in tech. I see it online. I see it in the stories that we read about. I see it in the fact that, you know, nobody that fucking makes any kind of wave PR wise in

tech is over the, over 22 years old. It's just all these fucking kids. But I started my own company at 25. Uh, I basically insulated from all this. I, I'm old, but I'm doing well. It doesn't really affect my life and it, I don't let it get me down. I go out and I do my job and I take care of it and I don't see the problem. So stop your whining old people, start your own companies, get out of the fucking programming business where you're not going to get hired. If you're over 25 years old and start your own fucking company and go do it.

Yeah. Hire some of these kids. Yeah. You know, turn around, become their boss. That's what we talked about, you know, last week. So that's where I'm moving with my business. Yeah. Use your experience, hire the kids and, uh, you know, run the show. That's what the experience is good for. The experience isn't good for you. Like being able to whip out some PHP code faster. The experience is, you know how to fucking do it and you know how to manage it and you know how to deal with clients and you know how it all works. That's your experience.

Yeah. Wear the big boy pants to work, you know, let the, let the little kid stay up 20 hours and work on this shit. Yeah. I've got, I've got three programming projects right now that I'm, that I'm knocking out and I swear to God, these are going to be my last three. I'm, I'm, I'm actively looking for PHP folk. So if you're good, call me. Excellent. Um, yeah.

Another thing that's pissing me off is this Netflix talk. It's still going on. You know, it's bouncing back and forth, right? It's, it's, it's exactly like it started with Netflix is, you know, we're ending net neutrality. This is all really bad. Then we got schooled on it and a couple of people sent us articles saying, no, that's not the fucking deal at all. Here's the real deal. Now it's swung back into, well, yeah, it kind of is. This is what's happening. What the fuck? So I, I'm so confused at this point.

I know, but they're talking about how now it's, remember I mentioned it's a last mile problem. Yeah. Uh, well there's an NPR art or piece on it that actually talks about the last mile problem. Yeah. And it's the, the telcos that you and I get our internet access through are pissed off because they have to upgrade their infrastructure because it's old and busted and they can't push enough, you know, house of cards or whatever the fuck you want to watch any video on demand through and still keep their network robust. Well, you know what? And they're like, who's going to pay for all this?

Well, we're paying you 128 bucks a month. Motherfuckers. Exactly. We're already paying for Netflix and we're also paying for your goddamn service. They are, as far as I'm concerned, they're mutually exclusive. I am paying to get bits from out there to in here and from in here to out there. You are a pipe. Be a fucking pipe and shut up. Seriously. I'm sick to fucking death of it. It's like, oh, we want more money. I'm like, you know how much it's, I mean, the, the price we're paying for internet right now

is ridiculous compared to everywhere else in the world, except probably, you know, Sudan. But no, I agree. I mean, the connectivity price that we pay in this country is sky high. There are some places that are worse, but when you start adding up like your cable bill and then your internet bill on top of that, and then you have to pay the 1495 for Netflix and I'm 995 for Spotify. And then you don't have to, you don't have to, no, you don't have to do all that, but you know what I'm saying? So all that stuff starts to add up and that's

before you've even thrown your cell phone bill in, which is also exorbitantly high. So shut the fuck up. You companies, shut up, fix this stuff and stop trying to gouge us. This is what we pay you for. Keeping your shit up to date is not our extra expense. No shit.

God damn it. Oh, and here we go. Microsoft this week, iPad, iPad, you know, uh, Word and Excel and PowerPoint for iPad. Free. No, no, not free. You have to have that stupid, uh, Outlook 365 account. Is that, is that what it is? Office 365. Whatever the fuck it is. It's too expensive and I'm never going to use it. So I was pissed off that I wasted the bandwidth that I'm obviously probably going to get charged for because their pipes are breaking down to get, uh, to get these

things on my iPad. And I'm like, you, you want me to subscription model for an app to change words in a document? Go to hell. I'm not doing that. Seriously. Yeah. I, I hate the subscription model that software is trying to push everyone towards.

It's ridiculous. Uh, but that could just be us being old and grumpy. Um, that was really annoying too. It's, it was a very misleading, misleading wording that was used when this was announced. It is technically free as a download. You don't have to pay for it from the iTunes store. Unfortunately, you can't actually use it unless you have the subscription.

Well, you can look at documents. You just cannot edit documents. Yeah. Um, I mean, I think it's a, it's a good thing because I know a lot of people that basically, you know, your lawyers and such that basically just kind of live off Microsoft office and they have to use it. And I'm assuming that their companies will pay for these subscriptions and now they don't have to lug around their laptops with them anytime they want to edit a document. They can just do it on, on their iPads, which is cool. I like that. But, uh, yeah, I'm never, I'm never going to use it. I'm not going to pay the money. Yeah. Yeah. I can do that

with pages right now and it doesn't, I don't have to pay a subscription for it, you know? Exactly. So there's that. Thank you. Uh, but, uh, you know, it seems that Microsoft and Apple are starting to play ball with each other, which is interesting. And, uh, who knows what that's going to end up leading to. Speaking of which the iPhone six is coming in September in theory, this is the first articles have come out saying, you know, based as per usual on Chinese manufacturers that are building the screens and have delivery orders and blah, blah,

blah, blah, blah. Uh, they're assuming a September announcement and there will be two different sizes, one with a higher resolution screen. So we shall see. I'm not, I'm not up for an upgrade through my Verizon, uh, account until next year anyway. So I won't be hopping on board.

I'm just not going to, I just can't keep up with this tech anymore. I cannot drop like $400 every year because they have a new phone. I will wait until I get my free upgrade. Yeah. I'm on the, I'm on the S track and honestly, I like the S track because I like the S phones better. Right. You know? Yeah. Let them work out the bugs. Yeah. Let them work out the bugs. But, uh, you know, for all you Apple freaks, the iPhone six is coming out.

Let the insanity begin in terms of rumors. Yeah, definitely. I, I, it's not even worth it. I gave up on this tent five years ago. Yeah. You know, I, it was fun when you're young and it's fun to do that and go stand in line. Well, even though I still do go stand in line. Um, but the speculation part, I couldn't care less. I've been through that cycle so many times. I really just don't care. Yeah. Gotcha.

Show it to me when it arrives. It's like the mammoth email. It's like, okay, you're working on something great. Show it to me when it's right when it arrives. Yeah. Good times. So I saw on time.com that, uh, they've announced that apparently 2045 is the year that man will become immortal. Um, numbers have been thrown around about this for a long time. It's, it's the singularity as we all like to discuss, uh, where the tech actually catches up and as

surpasses the ability of humans by a great degree. And they quickly figure out, you know, our robot overlords quickly figure out how to download into computers and we live forever and it's all good and fun in theory. Again, show it to me when it gets, I know I was, I was, the really funny thing is I had read that article and I was like, I'm, I'm really into this concept. Uh, Ray Kurzweil is one of the big proponents of it out there. And his book, the singularity is near, uh, when humans

transcend biology is a fucking great read and it's total science, nerd porn. And you go, God, this is going to be awesome. I can't wait for this to happen. And they do all these charts and graphs and show how, you know, mathematically this is the time that this is definitely going to happen by. In the meantime, I'm on my seventh run to home Depot because I can't get a fucking lock to work correctly. No, this is, our tech is so bad. Netflix is fighting with time Warner. I have the time my,

my, you know, you can't connect your Verizon LTE online anywhere. Tech sucks. There's no fucking way we're this close. Well, we might be that close, but for a very small fraction of the population. Yeah. Bill Gates. That's the way it's going to happen. The super, the super rich will get the, uh, the benefits first and then it'll, it'll be the trickle down effect. But when it comes to immortality, don't expect that to trickle down. No, no. And that's, uh, speaking of which, I mean,

that the fiction book, uh, I remember I talked to a couple of weeks ago, I believe I was going back and reading these books by James Halperin that were written in the early nineties as speculative near future fiction, just to see kind of how that was going. The second book that he wrote was called the first immortal. It was exactly about that. It was about the rich and privileged starting with it and how it trickled down through society and the different, excuse me. I need more tea. Apparently.

Apparently. Jesus. Yeah. So there you go. So there's, there's a couple of good books about it recently. Okay. Don't die on us there. No, I'm trying not to. I don't know what just, I get all worked up when I start talking about my seven home Depot runs. It's all the sawdust from all the contractors that too. So Kim.com, uh, of mega upload and mega fame.

And was that bamboozled? Is that the new one? I believe so. Yeah. Um, he, uh, this week he started the internet party in New Zealand, which I don't really live in New Zealand, so I can't join it. And I don't really care because well, Kim.com is, I find him slightly fascinating. I also think he's a fat douchebag who basically made his fortune off of theft of other people's property. You know, he could claim whatnot and, you know, fair use, safe Harbor or whatever for just being a, uh,

uh, a pass through for all the files. But at the end of the day, he knew what he was doing. He made a ton of money off of it. So wham, boo hoo. Well, hang on. The reason I bring this up is because the, on the internet party's website, he spent a ton of money to get one of the weirdest looking Barack Obama impersonators and, and whoever the head of the New Zealand government is, um,

get them together and make this like 12 minute parody video of I, how Kim.com is like going to change the world with his internet party manifesto. And it, I don't know, it was, it was weirdly fascinating and slightly embarrassing. It is, it is a train wreck. It's uncomfortable as hell.

Uh, really this guy is a train. I mean, I'm just looking at a picture of him right now and I'm sure, you know, because I spent a lot of time in Toronto, I'm spectacularly aware of Rob Ford, but I'm sure even you've heard of him. This guy is, is Rob Ford with more money. He's a fat, crazy, megalomaniacal, insane person. Yeah. He plays a lot of video games. He makes EDM music, you and your EDM. Yes. He put out an album, which is absolutely horrible.

I haven't listened. I wouldn't listen to it. Yeah. I did in the name of research. I mean, I had to do something. So yeah, it's a, it's really hilarious. I don't understand what this guy is doing with his life, but he seems to be having fun. So good on him. Yeah. He plays a lot of video. I think he was like one of the, he was a world championship for call for duty, uh, call of duty. I don't know which one I'm not 12. I don't play those things anymore. Um, but yeah, he's like a championship video gamer. I don't know. I was fascinated with

him for a while and I kind of liked it. Hey, look at my Twitter handle. It's Jason.com wasn't taken or was taken and I was trying to be, you know, Buddhist-y. Um, actually I was probably being whiskey, but, uh, it's still whiskey. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's how that came about. But yeah, the more I, the more I learn about this guy, the more I dislike him. Um, some of his, some of his, uh, theories about his political party are just not going to work. It's stupid. It's more about,

it's honestly more about getting a better internet connection than, you know, uh, dealing with trade and, you know, international taxes and, uh, GDP and that kind of thing, which is kind of important, more important than your internet connection in my opinion. But I mean, especially when you're an island like that, he should stay out of politics just as much as he should stay out of music. I mean, this is an ego thing. If he didn't have the ego, he would just be doing, you know, he'd be working politics from behind the scenes. He'd be, you know, throwing money here

and there to get what he wanted achieved. Instead, he's starting an entire party and just getting me, me, me attention. Cause that's the kind of guy he is. I mean, that's the personality, right? Yep. So I don't know. He needs to just go back to being behind the scenes. Exactly. But he's not going to. Oh, damn dogs. Dogs everywhere. Well, between you coughing and I got a dog here and all my, all my deliveries came. I got all my new gear. Um, so I saw this thing that I, it was just a

forehead smack. Now in San Francisco, there are, you know, we, we know who's in San Francisco. We've had this conversation before this, this time, this time it was just a forehead slap of irony because somebody is taking pictures of people texting on their phone in their car and then putting those pictures on billboards around the city. So people would, instead of looking at their phone, they'll be looking at the billboards of people on their phone to

see if it's them. So either way, it's distracted driving to the nth degree. It's just, you know, it is. Yeah. It's the definition of a catch 22. It's the dumbest thing I've ever, well, no, I've heard of plenty of dumb things. Nevermind. This is what, not even near the top of the level, but it's stupid. And it's the dumbest thing you've seen this week. It's the dumbest thing I've seen funded this week. It wasn't funded. He paid for it himself. Oh, what an idiot.

Yeah. Seriously. Like, how are you going to get a return on that? Yeah. Well, oh, the second dumbest thing, Virgin America, they're staffing all of their, uh, their gate crews with Google Glass. I see. This doesn't really even bother me outside of the fact that I recognize it's just a publicity stunt to get some press for a little bit and then they'll stop using it. Well, here's the problem I have with it. You said that you were, you would be okay if you got to the gate and they's like, hi, Brian, here's your, your, your, you know, your craft beer and your sushi and scotch and

whatever you like, you know? So they like troll your Facebook, figure out who you are, get your preferences and cater to you as you get there. Right. What if at one point you had a bad flight with another airline and they see that you are a problem passenger and a chronic problem passenger, which, cause I can see that being the case with you. Cause you are kind of curmudgeonly and kind of a dick when it comes to, uh, not getting your way around town. So I think that you might someday find out that you cannot fly on Virgin because you have a bad woofy because you have mistreated somebody

on another airline four years ago. I keep my bad mood completely self-contained and entirely to myself on flights. I have my sunglasses on, I have my headphones on and if I'm having a horrible experience, I see then wordly. Okay. Well then here, here's the deal. Then I might not get on a flight. You might not. Yeah. I mean, I can see that being a problem, but I mean, we still don't like you, you're smart enough not to make your Facebook public. So yeah, but they're not going to, Virgin's not going to see that through Google glasses. It still comes down to, they can only

get to the information that you release or that you let out there in some way, shape or form. So, well, I have had fights with Virgin American staff while in flight and had it remedied before we landed, you know? Yeah. So they, you know, they're, they're pretty good with knowing who you are and how to fix things. And I'm sure that they've got a little database that when you get on that flight, they're like, Oh shit. Oh, here it comes. Do not give him more than three whiskeys. Yep. Um, all right. Well, I mean, I'm just, I'm saying it's there, there is the

opportunity for problems to happen there and it's just creepy, but that can happen without Google glass. Nobody needs Google glass for that to happen. They can have a little, they can have little tablets. I'm surprised that like stewardesses and stewards don't have iPads and tablets that can tap into, you know, a virgin database anyways. And it probably gets stolen by, by TSA. True.

Welcome to this weekend shit we put on our computers. Uh, so I was just, uh, coming back. We took a little break because I definitely need some tea because my throat was going insane. And, uh, we were bitching off, uh, off air about our battery life on our phones. Since we switched to seven one, my iPhone has been ridiculously horrible, terrible. I need to charge it all the fucking time. It's got to constantly be plugged in or else I'm out of juice, you know,

like within two hours. That's bad. Anyways, ABC, ABC. Yeah. So always be charging. Always be charging. Do you, um, I wanted to ask you about it because what I've found is there's no one app that I can pinpoint the drain to. No, I can't either. I took off the notoriously bad things. Like I still use Argus, uh, for tracking steps and things like that, uh, which has always been pretty bad, but I've, I've shut that off and it makes no difference. I think it's completely the, the operating system this time around. And it's interesting

cause you only have a five and I've got a five S. Yeah. And it just drains bad. Like I've only really had my phone off charge for about an hour and a half today and I'm down to 50%. Yeah. It goes, it goes super fast. I had that problem when I was on the train and like trying to juggle, like keeping my computer charged and my phone charged. And I just would watch my phone just drop. Yeah. It's insane. I haven't really seen any articles about it. So, uh, let's, uh, get the word out there. I mean, if anybody else has noticed,

please back us up on this. It's been bad since we updated. Yeah. I, I, I, I'm going to ask around because I haven't seen it. Yeah. I haven't seen any like articles in the press about it either. Um, and you're the first person that actually brought it up to cause I thought maybe it was just me, but I thought it was just me too. I was like, God, I, it is because you know, I do have a five. Do I really need to update my phone already? Is there something wrong with just mine? But no, no happens totally on my six too. I mean, my five, sorry, not my six. Right. Wouldn't have one of those yet. Not yet. Um, so anyways, let's move on

to more shit that, uh, in this case I'm putting my computer on. I was talking about getting a standing desk a couple of months ago and then I got distracted by this whole buying a fucking place thing that happened. Um, and right now I'm still just kind of, uh, I have things perched on boxes and whatnot, but, uh, I've definitely decided that since I'm here, I'm going to spend the money, I'm going to get like my total dream office set up really super compact, stand up, all that sort of stuff. And I was Googling around and I found a site called the human

solution.com, which is basically all ergonomic products. And it looks like they have some really cool stuff in there. I haven't been able to explore it too much yet, but there's definitely a desk I have bookmarked and, um, there's really cool like mouse because I've really started to notice that my wrists are getting tweaky, but that's probably because I've been lifting boxes for two weeks. Um, it looks cool. It looks like they have some great stuff in there. I took a peek at it. Um, they do have really good prices on their treadmill desks. I was surprised. Uh, I think you can get a standing desk with a treadmill for 1500

bucks. Right. And most of the good treadmill desks are around 4k. So it looks pretty decent on price. Some of the stuff looks pretty good too. I wish I, I wish, or actually I'm very glad that I don't have a standing desk right now or well, you can't stand. Yeah. So that would have been, that would have been a problem. And I got six, I got six more weeks of it. So I'm stuck. Uh, but yeah, I get one. I love, I love my standing desks.

Awesome. Yeah. I'm definitely going to be looking into it. I'm not going to do the treadmill thing just because I'm, you know, here in sunny California, right by the beach and I do my bike rides and all that. But, uh, it's time for me to go to a standing desk and really kind of, I got to streamline my, my office. I'm sick of having the sprawling thing that takes up so much space.

Yeah. Yeah. You definitely have, well, you have a PC and all those monitors and all that crap. I'll get rid of the PC and I'll do one of the two monitor setups that does the, on the standing desk and it should be kick ass. So cool. So one thing that I found this week, which I completely took me by surprise because this came out about 21 days ago, I believe, which would be three weeks and normal people parlance, um, uh, MAMP, MAMP pro, which is the, what I use for my, you know, my computer simulation on my local machine for running a web

server, my SQL, you know, all that, that whole thing. Version three is out. Yay. And version three, uh, functionally has a bunch of new stuff in it, being able to switch between PHP versions per install at the same, so you don't have to like change it globally for all the sites you're working on because you can have multiple sites at the same time and all that blah, blah, blah. Um, the best thing about it though, is it's got a new icon in the dock, which is so much better than the old icon.

The old icon is ugly as hell. I don't know what it's supposed to be. It's some sort of elephant in a circle, but it looks like blurry, boring, bland. It looks like it should have been in the mammoth email that we got corporate kind of bullshit. So they fixed the, they fixed the icon. They fixed a couple of things. One thing they did not fix, which still is irksome. Um, most times when you run a website on a server, like a production server, you're running memcache, which is, lets you store values in memory to

retrieve them later. So you don't have to hit the database all the time for local, um, builds. Memcache doesn't come pre-installed and it's always a pain to get it, to compile it yourself and get it all running. So yeah, memcache didn't come with MAMP3, but, uh, there is, we're going to put a link in the show notes to a guy whose name I cannot pronounce. Um, he's got a thing up on GitHub, which has all like the pre-compiled stuff, uh, that can get, like as a drop

in for MAMP3. You will have to use like brew, um, to get it locally to get like memcache running on your machine. Right. Cause it's, you know, it's a service and a client type of thing. So once you get memcache running on your machine, then you can build against it just like you would in a production environment with, you know, just some custom switches. All in all is a $40 upgrade from version two. And I think it's a hundred bucks if it's new worth it. If you're a builder, get it seriously, it would mean, even if you're a tinkerer, get it.

Yeah, it's, it's pretty kick-ass. I mean, as, as we've talked about many, many times, I've been running on PC for ages. I wasn't even running anything local, uh, since I got my Mac and Jason set me up with MAMP, um, invaluable, so much easier. Everything's great. I love developing on it. It's fantastic. And I will have to do the three update as well.

Yep. Um, and a little bit of followup on something that I got before, which is the Zag keyboard, the Bluetooth like keyboard case that I got for my iPad air. I still love it when it works. Uh, they say that there's three month battery life and I charged this right before I went to LA, uh, two and a half weeks ago, three weeks ago. Um, yeah, dead on the train on the way home. So I had to, I had to thank God I brought the right cable with me. Um, so I could charge it up and use it, uh, cause I used it quite a bit on the

train. Right. And, um, yeah, when it works, it's great. So I'm going to keep an eye on this battery life, but there's three month claim. And is there like a little asterisk next to that? And then some small print that says assumes only 1.2 hours of daily usage. It's, it says assumes normal usage, but the other thing is not normal. I'm just going to state that. Oh, probably. And I always run it with the key with the backlight on so you can see the keys. Yeah. So that might explain a lot. Yeah. But three months

versus three weeks. You should know by now we've been doing this for how long, Jason, you and I are not what anyone would consider a standard user for any product. We, we overuse the shit out of our stuff. I know, but I was hoping for at least a month. That would be nice. Yeah. Fuck it. Air candy, candy, candy, candy.

So we don't really have anything, uh, really eerie for the ear candy this week. There's something that looks pretty eerie though. Uh, were you a fan of Fargo? I love, I love the movie. I love it. Yeah. I didn't really, I, everybody loved it. I could, I just, I liked like two characters in the movie. Like, well, it's Steve Buscemi. I love in no matter what he's in. So I just watch him in anything. I was one of those movies that just didn't really like, you know, draw me in and get me going. I'm not a huge Coen

Brothers fan. Oh, see, I am a huge Coen Brothers fan. And the thing about the thing that made Fargo good. And I wonder if going back and maybe you should do this for your other podcast, uh, where you go back and see if it has legs. Um, one of the things I loved about Fargo is Fargo was quirky before quirky was a thing. You know what I'm saying? Like people weren't leaping out and not everybody was doing quirky then. So it was just so crazy weird. It's also

kind of why I feel like Northern Exposure. Remember that TV show was popular. It wasn't actually really that good, but nobody was doing quirky like that. So it was really cool for that and really innovative and, and interesting at the time because nobody was doing anything like it. So that's my thoughts on Fargo, but the TV show is coming.

Yes. The TV show looks amazing. Yes, it does. The promos are fantastically well done because I, I, when I first heard that they were bringing this as a TV series, I was just like, Oh, seriously, it was a two hour movie. How are you going to make it into a series? And then I saw the, the trailer and the, the sheer amount of talent that they have in this series is mind boggling.

It's all about TV. Now TV is the new movies. All movies that come out now are pretty much shit and horrible and crap. And all the good work is totally being done in TV. You got your game of Thrones, you got your house of cards, et cetera. True detective, which I would say, which, which has the Academy award winner for best actor in it. It's all about TV shows now. So, I mean, the people that are on this, it does look really, really good. I'm definitely looking forward to checking it out.

Yeah. And like I said, not even as a non fan of the movie, this looks good to me. So I'm going to definitely going to watch it. Cool. Yeah, I am too. So we'll be, I'm sure talking about that. Um, no new music to speak of this week in terms of ear candy. And you don't even have a podcast, which I'm shocked by, but I have stumbled across a couple of different, um, there's an ongoing series of articles that's being done on slate and you're going to make fun of me for picking on slate

again. But again, they have really good writers and they actually pay the writers. So occasionally you actually get real journalism, which is nice. And, uh, you don't really see that very often anywhere else. So yeah, yeah, yeah. Get to the fucking story, get to the fucking story. Anyways, they have a series where they actually go through and explain why, um, really big pop songs are popular and they do it through music theory and math. And it's a really good read.

Uh, don't let the music theory and math parts scare you because they actually start to talk a lot about, uh, just kind of the process of songwriting and what makes a song. And it's done in relatively laymanist language. So, so you'll get it. And it's really interesting. In this particular article, they talk about Daft Punk's get lucky, uh, which is a massive, huge, gigantic world stomping hit. Um, they've also done a Katy Perry song and I haven't read that one yet cause I just came across this today. So, but it was a fun article to

read. Really interesting to, uh, see how they break down the songs and, uh, explain why this is an earworm and why you can't stop listening to it. Yeah. I might have to check that out cause, um, yeah, get lucky. Isn't an earworm for me. So if they, if they say it is, it is for most of the world, Jason.

Okay. Well, listen, I don't follow, you know, celebrity news and I don't follow pop music. Uh, what do you want? I, hell, I, you know, I listen to the fucking dead Kennedys most of the time and that's my, that's what I get through. Um, Hey, you can't go wrong with that. Actually, I heard punk rock girl on, on a serious the other day and I hadn't heard that for ages.

Oh, some dead milkman. Yeah. Dead milkman. It was good. Some good stuff. Serious too. Oh, I actually thought about getting, uh, one of those serious gimmicks for, for the house. Are they any good? Uh, no, no. Okay. I mean, to be honest, I mean the whole promise, I mean, if you're a Howard Stern fan, it might be worth it. If you're really into like obscure, like 1940s bossa Nova, there's probably a channel that's dedicated directly to that. But if you're really into anything that obscure, you probably own it all on vinyl or something like

that. Um, all the, all the channels are just so playlisted. Well, they didn't used to be, I was, I was on board early with satellite radio. Uh, and it was used to be really, really good. Um, but now it's like the two channels that I really love. One is like the eighties new wave channel and the other one's the nineties, um, kind of grunge channel. And they play the same fucking 10 songs. It's so playlisted. They rarely do deep cuts. There's specific shows that are okay.

Like there's the safe, the Saturday night safety dance on the eighties channel, which is kind of fun, but I've even listened to that a few times now and I'm starting to hear the same damn mixes every single time. Um, yeah, I, I, I don't know. You're better off. I I'd rather do Apple radio. Okay. I'll, I'll stick to that then. Cause I had it in a car when I went, uh, last time I came to LA, not this last, this one, the one before that, and I had serious in there. And the one thing that I really liked about it was the comedy central standup channel. Cause I could listen to standup

comedy the whole time when I'm driving. Cause you need something for levity while you're driving in LA traffic. So you don't want to kill anybody and have your falling down moment. Yeah. Like the comedy channels are the ones that I find myself listening to the most often actually on, on, on the stations now, because all the music is just to play listed. I mean, again, if you're really into something like Pearl jam, Pearl jam has their own channel and they play like, you know, exactly. But if you're into Pearl jam, it's like, here's the 19, uh, 1994 concert from Poughkeepsie. That's never

been heard before. And I guess that's cool, but yeah, I'm not going to, I'm probably it's built into my car. I've got it for another year. I'll, I'll decide if the 150 bucks or whatever it is for the year is worth it or not at that point. Okay, cool. Yeah. 150 bucks a year, not worth it for it's pretty pricey. Yeah, it's pretty pricey. Okay. Well, hopefully next week we'll have something more, uh, entertaining for as far as the podcast side goes. I just, I haven't had anything this

week. I have three of them lined up that I just saw that looked pretty cool. Uh, one, one on the internet of things, which I'm really interested in. So I'll let you know next week if that actually pans out or not. Excellent. Yo, seriously? Are you shitting me? This week's ridiculous fact. Not once in the entire Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme does it ever mention that he's an egg. Okay. Every animation, every immediate

thought of Humpty Dumpty, you see an egg sitting on a wall. Not once is that mentioned. So do you know where it comes from? Who was the first person to actually, you know, draw him as an egg? No idea. God damn, man. You and the research, we're going to have to take you out back and have a word. Oh, well, maybe I'll present that next week along with next week's ridiculous fact. Keep you listening. See how we're tagging? I want your research. I want your research. I'll do research this time. Show my work. Show my new math.

This week in false advertising. So we already spent a bit of time bitching about the mammoth email that we got that was just corporate stock footage and no information whatsoever. Stumbled across a genius fake ad. This is a generic brand video originally published on McSweeney's.

We'll have a link to it in the show notes. I ran across it on adweek.com. It is hilarious. It's two minutes and 50 seconds of a beautifully shot and scored and bland phrases that mean absolutely nothing. Stock imagery that means absolutely nothing that tells you how you should feel good about this and insert brand here. It cracked the fucking hell out of me. I just, I was dying watching it. It was really funny. And what I thought was really interesting is it was done

by a company that sells stock footage. And all the, yes, they use their own products brilliantly. Yeah. Eat your own dog food. Yeah. Good stuff. Definitely worth a watch. Especially if you work in any kind of industry whatsoever that deals with advertising or promotion, or you are just sick of fucking dumb commercials.

Now, here's the thing about this is this was taken from somebody else's project and they recreated it. So, I think we need to dig up the original product and put it in there if we can find it, because I would like to see that one, too, if we can dig it up. Yeah, yeah. We'll definitely do a search for that. We'll try to get that in the show notes in time.

Cool. I dig it. Yeah, go watch it. Go watch it. It's a good laugh. Closing shout-outs! So, I want to do a quick shout-out to somebody I know named Gigi Edgley. Now, if you were a fan of Farscape way back in the day, the single best sci-fi show that got canceled like everything else I love, she played Chiana, the girl that was all in white.

Met her years ago. So, I redid her website this week because she's got a new show on sci-fi.com called Jim Henson's Creature Shop Challenge, which is actually pretty entertaining because they make these creatures – it's Project Runway for monster makeup, really.

That's what it is. But it's fun because they make these full-on, like, you know, suits for people to wear in, like, two days. It's crazy talk. So, in the – she needed the site done really fast, and it needed to look decent, and it needed to look decent on mobile.

It doesn't everyone. So, I have heard the advertisements like everybody else, Squarespace, Squarespace, and we've talked about Squarespace a gazillion times. And I'm like, fuck it. I'm doing it. I'm just going to knock it out for her because she was going to use Wix, I think.

Wix.com, which is another one that advertises it's the same type of thing. Right. Which just looks terrible. Wix is a piece of crap. Oh, my God. It's so awful. If you use it, get the hell out of there. So, I took the weekend, and I rebuilt ggedgely.com.

And, oh, my God. People who make Squarespace need to be shot. Nobody can use this. It is the most unintuitive, fuster-cluck piece of shit I have ever, ever used. Right. Nothing works right.

Okay. I just – I don't get it. But by the time I was done, I was able to eke out a passable website. She liked it. Her fans liked it. Everything was fine. But I swear to God, just the text handling alone, if you paste in a block of text, it will, like, break the lines apart into separate entity boxes with no rhyme or reason.

So, you have to, like, select them individually just to format them differently. Oh, my God. Right. Mind-bogglingly complicated for something that should not be that complicated. No, the whole point of Squarespace is quick, easy, free websites, right? Well, not even free. No, no, not free. Yeah. Because I put it on my – I mean, I – the run on my site, jpd.me, was the run-up to do her site on it.

Right. Now, her site was a little bit more complicated because she had specific things that we needed to do, right? Mm-hmm. Well, so that's where we run into the problems. Yeah. Just doing, like, aligning images with text wraps and things like that that are just simple in HTML. It's like, you know, you do text align left, right.

You just do some CSS blocking, and boom, Bob's your uncle. Yeah. There. No, no, no way. Everything's got – everything has to be drag-and-drop, funky-dory. And, yeah, you can put in code. I actually had to write some tables. Oh, wow. Yep.

I'm telling you. Awesome. Well, she had tabular data. Yeah. She had – her career bio is tabular data, and I needed to put a table in. And you have to write it by hand in Squarespace. I'm like, with all this fancy shit, you just can't have a box for tables. I know. You know? See, all that table knowledge that we did way back in the day, still worthwhile, still used.

Oh, you know what it's used for? And I get this. I get this, like, probably two or three times every quarter. Is emails, you know? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Anytime you do a mailing, you've got to put things on the table. You can't mess around with anything else. Yeah. I was doing – when I was at two jobs ago, I was doing ABC's Dancing with the Stars emails every week for seven weeks.

Yeah. You know what? I should have got hazard pay for that. I've got PTSD from it. Like, every time I just see something dancing with the stars, my hands start to shake. I feel that way anyways, and I didn't even have to work with them. Oh, God. I tell you. Bad stuff. Yeah. So, yeah. If you get a chance, go check out Gigi's new site, and you can laugh at my Squarespace foo.

I'll put a link to her show in there too. It's on Tuesdays, I believe, on SyFy. I'm definitely going to check out the show. I mean, as much as I'm against any kind of, like, reality TV show, I mean, I love the Muppets, and I love the – the whole concept is fine. It's like Project Runway for geeks. I mean – It really is, and they've got people who work at Henson to be, like, mentors.

Oh, that's great. So, yeah, if you can get – if you can get, like, last week was the premiere, so if you can just get it on On Demand and then get caught up. It was – just watching what these guys can do in two days is pretty amazing. Very cool. I don't really have anything for a shout-out other than the fact that, again, another part of moving has been paring down a little bit and trying to kind of go through all the stuff that I've been lugging around with me for years and years, and I just don't use anymore.

If we have any aspiring musicians out there or kind of people that are really into synth programming or anything of that sort, get in touch with me because I've got a ton of physical gear that I'm actually going to start getting rid of that I just don't use anymore. You know, I've done my bit for King & Country.

I recorded and released an album. I don't need to have this stuff sitting around anymore. I still like tinkering with music, but almost everything I do is now digital and virtual instruments. I don't actually use the physical anymore. I've got some really great pieces of equipment. I'll let them go for whatever the kind of generic random price is out there on your Ebays and Craigslist.

So if anybody is looking for something, write me a load. How do they get in touch with you, Brian? Brian at SlenderFungus.com or just go through the Grumpy Old Geeks site or find my Twitter at GrumpyOldGeeks.com. Cool. And you talked about your album that you released. Yeah. Can you put that stuff in the show notes so we can put it out for the people?

Because I still listen to your album when I'm working because I think it was a great album. Oh, thank you, man. Really? Yeah, I do. Oh, wow. That's pretty nice. Okay, we'll throw that in the show notes. We worked under the name of Among Us and we're on iTunes. I think we're actually on Spotify and all that sort of stuff now too.

So we're on the streaming services. You can listen to the album there. Yeah, again, Among Us. A-M-U-N-G-U-S. But we'll throw a link in. I think there's still an AmongUs.com, but I haven't looked at it in years because we're not actively writing anymore. That's a pretty good domain though.

Make sure you keep it. Oh, yeah. I'm going to hold on to it. Cool, man. Yeah, I definitely still listen to it when I'm – it's in my electronic playlist rotation when I get down to work. Oh, thanks. Glad you made it. You gave me a shout-out.

Thank you. You're welcome. All right, man. Okay, well, since this has turned into a Mutual Dicks Fest, it's time to call it a week and I will see you next time. Yep, see you next time, man. Keep up with the Grumpy Old Geeks on the web at GrumpyOldGeeks.com, on Facebook at Facebook.com slash GrumpyOldGeeks, or email them at podcast at GrumpyOldGeeks.com.

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