A little dive into Guardians of the Galaxy and Brett’s history with raccoons. The group does mental health, Grapptitude… and ‘Grapptibitching.’

Show Links

Charles Edge
TRS-80
Journal CLI
No Name Bar
The Spotify playlist for No Name, Sept 28, 2023
The mentioned Rocket Raccoon podcast is no longer available due to copyright claim
Rocket was the real protaganist
Giveaways on BrettTerpstra.com
Interlink
Deckset
- IA Presenter
Noteplan

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Transcript

Rocket Was Always the Protaganist

[00:00:00] Brett:

[00:00:03] Brett: Welcome back, Overtired listeners, it has been a minute. Um,

[00:00:08] Jeff: I’m Sam Sanders. Sorry.

[00:00:11] Brett: we, we have been, we have been on a little bit of a break, but I am Brett Terpstra. I am here with Jeff Severins Gunsel and Christina Warren. How you guys doing? How you holding up?

[00:00:22] Jeff: I wish I was Sam Sanders and I wish he was still hosting. It’s been a minute because he’s phenomenal. It’s still a great show. Sorry. I’m good. Hi, Christina. Hi.

[00:00:30] Christina: Hi, I’ve missed you guys.

[00:00:32] Brett: Yeah, how long’s it been? We, we took a couple weeks off. I think two, maybe three. Um, we had a lot of, there was a lot of travel, a lot of end of summer stuff going on. And, uh, and we, and we have zero sponsors for the foreseeable future. So if we need a week off, we’re taking a week off. And, uh,

[00:00:53] Jeff: Does anybody have like a, like an AA sponsor they could bring on? I’m

[00:00:56] Christina: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or, or, or, hey, but, but genuinely, if you have, um, a, [00:01:00] uh, you know, a product service app that you would like to get out to an audience of, uh, you know, um, nerds and, uh, and whatnot, uh, hit us up and, um, sponsor, sponsor the pod.

[00:01:11] Brett: for sure. I, um, it’s, it’s kind of nice not being beholden to anybody.

[00:01:17] Christina: Oh, totally. I’m just saying.

[00:01:19] Brett: But yeah, I mean, and I know from experience that people will forgive this show for disappearing for like up to a year at a time, and they keep, and they stick around, they keep coming back. We had a couple years of very sporadic podcasts, and when we started back up, our downloads were about the same as they were when we left off.

[00:01:44] Brett: To be fair, In the past, when we were on 5×5, our show got 30, 000 downloads a week, which is very respectable. These days, I’m not going to throw out numbers, but it is far less than that. [00:02:00] Um, it is, it is a fraction of

[00:02:03] Jeff: select group of people that we allow to listen to this

[00:02:05] Brett: But we have very loyal listeners who, who know us and, and if they met us on the street, they would all be very kind.

[00:02:13] Jeff: I love you, Danny Glamour.

[00:02:15] Mental Health Corner

[00:02:15] Brett: We all love Danny Glamour. Um, uh, so anyway, we should kick off a mental health corner, find out where everybody’s at. Uh, Jeff, how you doing?

[00:02:26] Jeff: I am doing pretty good. Um, I, I am doing pretty good. I have, uh, yeah, I’m doing good. I, I said that six times now, which probably means I’m not doing good. No, I think I am. Um, I, uh, I’m, I’m in the midst of, uh, preparing for a, um, Pretty whack a doodle, uh, uh, yard sale of tools. Um, that is, uh, the tools I will be selling cover a bizarre range of things from the industrial to the eccentric and, uh, [00:03:00] and much of what’s there is the result of a, what I, what I, you know, now understand was a, a manic episode.

[00:03:07] Jeff: Two and a half years ago, a month long, I’ve never had anything like it. I’ve, I’m diagnosed with bipolar, um, but I, and,

[00:03:16] Brett: Type one. I

[00:03:17] Jeff: and type, yeah, whatever the one where people go, oh, bummer. Um, and, uh, And, and I’ve, and I now understand what manic episodes have looked like in my life and they never looked like this. And I was obsessed with this idea that I was burned out in my work.

[00:03:35] Jeff: And I loved working in my workshop. I have a kind of extensive workshop. I like doing metal work. I like just like doing random commissions. I like, uh, fixing old, old things. Um, and, and I decided that’s, I’m going to figure out how to make a life. Out of this, and it’s going to be funded by flipping, uh, by flipping old tools that I, that I restore using my great judgment, which of course, when you’re manic, your judgment is incredible.

[00:03:59] Jeff: [00:04:00] Um, and so I started going to, I started bidding in auctions for about a month. Closed, like steel factories that were closing down and like, uh, this old man in Spooner, Wisconsin had died, Charlie, and he was basically they were like auctioning off his entire shop and I bought a bunch of like, valuable vintage tools for nothing and, and bought way too much of them and, and almost, almost destroyed my van trying to drive it home.

[00:04:27] Jeff: Um, and so anyway, I, I thought it was the best month of my life until I realized it was probably the worst. And I brought home so much stuff in that month and, and spent so much money. Um, and it really kind of brought my whole life, uh, to a grinding. Halt, I guess. Um, as I sort of lost that energy and realized what had happened and it was difficult in my home, in my relationship, it was difficult for me because the workshop I loved, that I was already struggling to keep clean now, was basically, [00:05:00] you couldn’t navigate it.

[00:05:01] Jeff: And I, and because that led to my diagnosis and, and that led to a long period of trying to find the right medications, which led to gaining a bunch of weight, which led to getting diabetes, which led to getting diabetes meds that caused me to lose a bunch of weight, like, uh, not to mention, you know, different the way different drugs impact you and how long it takes you to realize it.

[00:05:21] Jeff: And then how painful it is when you stop, you know, like it was a two year process that ended not that long ago, maybe like six months ago. And I feel great now and I feel really even and I, and that’s just wonderful. But, um, I had to let all that stuff just stay in this terrible condition. I had to just, I essentially made it a time capsule.

[00:05:38] Jeff: And, um, and, and recently through just a lot of hard work and therapy, I was able to kind of face it cause like one of the things that I learned about having a really destructive manic episode is like. It’s really painful to feel like you can’t trust yourself, because I, I’ve always felt like I can trust myself, trust my gut, and I have, I think, been able to do that, and it’s served me well, [00:06:00] um, but my judgment in that period was so fucking off, and, um, and it was, it was exaggerated parts of real me, right?

[00:06:09] Jeff: Like, it wasn’t like, oh, I’m not me, it was like, no, I’m definitely me, and, and all of the, the, the dials, and I’m not going to see up to 11, it’s overused in our culture, but all the dials are just, all the faders are up,

[00:06:21] Brett: then some.

[00:06:21] Jeff: Yeah, I was fucking Jeff, right? Like, um, and, uh, and so anyway, it’s, it’s this beautiful thing.

[00:06:29] Jeff: Cause I, I finally realized, okay, I think I can go in. I think I can sort through this stuff. I think I can make sort of a really fun sale. And the concept of the sale. Is it’s, um, I’m, I’m liquidating my Uncle Ray’s, uh, uh, workshop and collection. My Uncle Ray was a little bit of a hoarder. Uh, he, he passed recently.

[00:06:49] Jeff: Um, he was an eccentric. He’s a wonderful guy. Uh, and I, I really love him. And he asked me in his last dying wish was just make sure my stuff goes to a good home. And if it can’t [00:07:00] take it to the dump, um, and, and I, I created that idea, which I may not even go with because I loved the possibility. Let me tell you, when I have this sale, it’s going to draw in some weirdos.

[00:07:10] Jeff: And, um, and, and so I didn’t want to have to argue with people about whether something works or the value of something I wanted to be like, look, man, I can’t tell you if that thing’s working. It was Uncle Ray’s and I can’t tell him. I wouldn’t lie. I wouldn’t say something works when it doesn’t. I literally sometimes don’t know if it works, right?

[00:07:27] Jeff: Like the cables cut or something, but it’s like a really valuable thing with a cable cut, whatever. Maybe. So the leftover manic part of me still thinks probably. Um, but I,

[00:07:38] Brett: how are you advertising this?

[00:07:40] Jeff: Well, I only decided today I’m finally going to do it next week. My, my wife was like, here’s the deal. Have the sale you can have.

[00:07:48] Jeff: Because I was like, there’s going to be a popcorn machine. There’s going to be, you know what I mean? Like,

[00:07:54] Christina: You’re like, this is gonna be a sale. This is gonna be like a good old batch of like, rummage

[00:07:58] Brett: This

[00:07:58] Jeff: We’re gonna have, we’re gonna have [00:08:00] balloons, uh, you know, and, and Laurel at one point was like, you know, I, I see you, I love this Uncle Ray thing, I think it’s great, I think it’s a great way to kind of have fun and probably part of healing from this thing and having a little distance from it so you don’t have to answer the question of why do you have all this stuff, dude, right?

[00:08:16] Jeff: But she’s like, I see you possibly spending too much time on the backstory of Uncle Ray. And I was like, fair enough, fair enough. And then the other thing she said that was so helpful was exactly that, like, just have this lady you can have, have it next weekend. So until the moment we started recording or met up here, I’ve been prepping for this yard sale, which is about so much more than selling tools.

[00:08:39] Brett: Wow.

[00:08:40] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:08:42] Brett: Yard sale as mental health coroner. I

[00:08:44] Jeff: Yeah. We’ll see. I don’t like, I do not like, uh, having garage sales. I don’t want, I look at people that come and look at my shit and I’m like, what the fuck are you doing looking at my shit? Even though I put it out there, you know, it’s

[00:08:54] Brett: don’t deserve

[00:08:55] Jeff: You don’t deserve this. Yeah, you don’t know what to do with this.

[00:08:57] Jeff: Uh, so, we’ll see if I can [00:09:00] pull it off. That’s why it’s good that it’s Uncle Ray. I’m thinking of having a picture of Uncle Ray with like a born and death date. And then, and the last bit is, anybody who, who says, who is, are you Uncle Ray? They get a 20 percent discount. If they figure it out, they get a discount.

[00:09:14] Jeff: So, I’m not trying to just straight up lie to

[00:09:16] Brett: uh,

[00:09:17] Jeff: Um, that’s my story. That’s my check in.

[00:09:21] Brett: I went to a garage sale once when I was maybe 16, and… There was an Oscar, like the computer, the, like, briefcase computer, the Oscar, um, and they were real cagey when you first started asking questions about it because clearly they wanted it to go to a good home. I believe the magic words were when I asked, is that a 300 Baud modem?

[00:09:51] Brett: And… And they were like, okay, this guy, this guy might want this. Um, maybe it wasn’t even the Oscar. Maybe like I bought [00:10:00] that summer, I bought an Oscar and I bought an AT& T Unix machine, one of their first

[00:10:05] Jeff: Damn.

[00:10:06] Brett: AT& T machines. And that was the one that had a 300 bud coupler modem that like came out the side and you.

[00:10:12] Brett: You put the phone receiver into it and, and like, and then it was like a 300 baud connection to your gopher servers or whatever.

[00:10:21] Christina: right, right.

[00:10:22] Brett: Um, I learned Unix on that AT& T machine. That is where I learned most of my Unix skills. Um, but anyway, I, I feel like the idea that people who have garage sales really do want their shit to go to people who will cherish it.

[00:10:42] Brett: Oh, nice.

[00:10:43] Jeff: TRS 80, the Trash

[00:10:46] Brett: Trash

[00:10:46] Jeff: I just pulled out my Mint Condition Trash 80, which I’ll talk about after this. I just want to say a little bit about vintage computing when we’re done with our check ins.

[00:10:54] Brett: 80. Jeff is currently holding up a Trash 80.

[00:10:57] Jeff: A portable Trash 80.

[00:10:59] Christina: I have to be [00:11:00] honest with you guys, um, I’d always like, heard like, what a trash AD is or whatever, but like, I didn’t know what it looked like until maybe, I don’t know, like a year or two ago, and then I was like, oh, damn. That’s

[00:11:10] Brett: had

[00:11:11] Christina: Cause, no, no, no, did, did all of them have, um, integrated screens or were, or was that only some of

[00:11:15] Brett: Like, one line screen.

[00:11:17] Christina: Yeah.

[00:11:18] Jeff: this one’s like a, I think a five line

[00:11:20] Christina: Yeah, yeah,

[00:11:21] Jeff: Yeah,

[00:11:21] Christina: did they all have

[00:11:22] Jeff: there was like a desktop

[00:11:23] Christina: Okay. Okay. See, this is why I was confused because in my mind I’d always anticipate, I’d always thought that it was like a, a desktop thing, right? And, and normal desktop computer, you know, home computer thing. But then I saw it with the screen and I was like, oh shit, if I’d known that it looked like that, like I would have been way more into it.

[00:11:38] Christina: So I think, I think that’s what it was.

[00:11:39] Jeff: since we’re in it, I’ll just give you the quick story of this thing. So I had posted a photo that my sons volunteer at a place here called Free Geek and, and part of Free Geek is just taking apart electronics so they can recycle them. The other part is a electronics thrift store. Um, and, and so last week actually, I saw a Commodore 64 executive, which is like, you [00:12:00] pick it up with a big handle and it’s got a little integrated screen and the keyboard comes out and they had one of the old Heath kit computers there.

[00:12:07] Jeff: Anyway. So we had picked up a, uh, an old like 90s PC pre Pentium and the boys run Doom on it and play Doom on it. And I put a picture of that on Facebook and, and Eric Ringham, who’s, I knew when I worked at Minnesota Public Radio, greatest voice in radio, um, had worked for the Star Tribune, which is our local Minneapolis paper.

[00:12:26] Jeff: And he messaged me and he’s like, Hey, I have a TRS 80 if you want it. And I was like, yes, I want it. And I went over to his house the next day. It’s in mint condition. It still works. And it had the Star Tribune’s, um, instructions for use, which called it instructions for using the Trash 80 is what it said.

[00:12:42] Jeff: And it actually was, he took it to China and he used it as a foreign correspondent, but because he could never figure out how to use the modem, um, he, he still had to call his editor and read the copy that he, that he typed on this. And sadly he had programmed Space Invaders into it, but it’s still, it doesn’t exist there [00:13:00] anymore.

[00:13:00] Jeff: So anyway, that’s how I ended up with the Trash 80. Um, it’s beautiful.

[00:13:03] Brett: Do you guys know who Charles Edge is?

[00:13:06] Jeff: Oh, name only.

[00:13:07] Brett: Um, I met him a while back and he is, he contributes to like Huffington Post and he writes books. Um, but he is basically, aside from being a computer scientist, he’s a historian of computing. And that guy, you give him like a model number and he can tell you like the history and the capabilities of just about any…

[00:13:33] Brett: Historical machine. He’s very interested. He’s also very good looking. Straight, straight, but very good

[00:13:39] Jeff: You know, I, just a thing about Huffington Post, cause it’s been the case for many, many years, maybe nigh on decades, that saying you write for Huffington Post is the same as saying you write for Myspace. It’s like, it’s not, it’s not a thing that was like, we’re picking you anymore, but that’s all right.

[00:13:53] Jeff: That’s all right.

[00:13:54] Brett: Yeah. Um, let’s see. He also writes for ink. [00:14:00] com. That counts for something, right?

[00:14:01] Jeff: Sure. Is that a tattoo rag or? Uh huh.

[00:14:05] Brett: All right. Christina, how’s your mental health?

[00:14:08] Christina: My mental health is good. Um, I think that the new antidepressant is working. So yay. Um, applause everyone. Um, so that’s really, really good. So I actually spent, like last week, this week has been fine. I’ve been just doing work stuff. Um, work is starting to get hectic, but last week I actually had like a, a week of like concerts that.

[00:14:27] Christina: The concerts were great, but it was also one of those things where, like, I’m reaching the age where I go to see concerts and, like, I look at the crowd and I see how old the crowd is and it, like, makes me uncomfortable with my own mortality. So I went and, so the first thing, so my friend Erin and I basically did, like, a week of concerts.

[00:14:42] Christina: So she lives in Raleigh. We work together. She’s my GitHub work wife. Um, I, I usually get married to at least one person, um, per job, but she’s my GitHub work wife. And, um… She was, she was in Seattle visiting some friends that she has. Yeah, I think that’s you. And, [00:15:00] uh, so we went to see, cause we, we have similar taste in music.

[00:15:03] Christina: And so we went to see at a winery and I’d never been to this winery before. I’d never been to this part of, um, Washington before, Woodinville. And I’ve been wanting to go there. We saw Dashboard Confessional, who I’ve seen many, many times and we’ve talked about on this pod. And I saw Counting Crows. And Counting Crows is one of my favorite bands ever.

[00:15:20] Christina: And they’re actually one of the best bands, amazing band. And live, they are phenomenal. Um, Erin had never seen them live. And I told her, I was like, no, like they’re one of the best bands you will ever see live. And she was like, it’s kind of skeptical. And then afterwards she was like. Holy shit, you’re right.

[00:15:36] Christina: I was like, yeah, I know. Um, they, uh, they were amazing. They did this right after the, uh, Prepare to Feel Really Awful, the 30th anniversary of August and Everything After.

[00:15:46] Jeff: Oh, dude, everything’s the 30th anniversary for me, and we’re getting up on 40th with some of these

[00:15:50] Christina: But, but, no, but, no, but that would like mindfucked me and, uh, but they, they, they were amazing. They did a lot of great songs. They opened with my favorite Counting Crows song, which I was not [00:16:00] expecting. And so that was kind of like a whole thing. And, um, they cover Taylor Swift actually, like on their, on their set list, which like was to me, like they covered the one from, um, Folklore, which I, I was not expecting at all.

[00:16:13] Christina: And I was like, okay, my two worlds are colliding here and, and, and I don’t know how I feel about this, but I love it. Um, but then so, so we did that on, on Saturday and then on Sunday we flew to Raleigh and I stayed with her. She was gracious enough to host me and we saw Ben Folds on Wednesday in Raleigh.

[00:16:30] Christina: Um, he’s doing, um, solo piano shows, um, across the U. S. because he just released a new album and I love Ben Folds. Love, love, love him. But he’s from South Carolina. And we, um, uh, basically that was like the, the hometown show. Like we, we paid to do the meet and greet. We did not pay for the photo op because I’m not going to pay 75 for a photo.

[00:16:50] Christina: I already have photos of me in binfolds. I’m not going to, to do that. But I did pay 75 for the meet and greet, which had an AMA part, which was great, which was lovely. And like his [00:17:00] One of his original music teachers was there from like elementary school, as well as like a guy that he went to high school with.

[00:17:05] Christina: Like it, so it was, it was pretty cool, like just in the, in the audience. So that was pretty cool. And, um, and he was great. And then we, so, so we, our whole thing is, so we were like, okay, we’re going to go see him in Raleigh. And then we got on a plane at 5 AM on Thursday morning and flew to DC to see him at the Kennedy Center.

[00:17:26] Christina: And, and so I spent the weekend in

[00:17:28] Jeff: Damn, that’s quite a week.

[00:17:30] Christina: Yeah, yeah, it was. It was, it was really, really fun. And, you know, this is the sort of shit that I usually do, like, when I’m feeling like me, like, I will totally just be the sort of person who’s like, yeah, one of my favorite bands is playing two shows, and they’re a city apart. get on an airplane and do it. Like, I do that shit, right? But I haven’t done that in a But I haven’t done that in a really long time, and I planned this when I wasn’t feeling [00:18:00] good, but I’m so glad I was feeling good when

[00:18:04] Jeff: That’s amazing.

[00:18:05] Christina: I did it. And then we went to a Nationals game, saw the Braves. The Braves beat the Nats, go Braves.

[00:18:12] Christina: Um, I just had a really nice weekend in Washington, D. C. with my friend, and I just, I was like, I don’t know, it like, hit me. I was like, I feel like myself. Like I’m gonna cry because I felt like myself for the first time in a long time.

[00:18:26] Brett: you planned this when you weren’t feeling like yourself, did, were you? Yeah, exactly, were you, did you plan it in the hopes that you were gonna feel like yourself in time?

[00:18:36] Christina: I think so. And, and, and if not, then it was one of those things where I was like, well, I’ll just, I’ll do it right. Like I can just, this couldn’t just be one of those things that I just kind of like, you know, suck up and do. Right, right. But, but it, but it wouldn’t have been the same thing because live music, um, invigorates me and, and sustains me in a way. Basically, like nothing else. That’s why I always go on like my concert adventures, like [00:19:00] people, you know, some people, people spend their money on different things. I don’t judge, um, and, and so I know people look at me sometimes and they think it’s weird, you know, um, that I’ll, I’ll fly to different cities, um, frequently, you know, to, to see concerts, but, um, live music really does, um, um, Invigorate me.

[00:19:17] Christina: And, but this, yeah, you know, I, I planned this before I was feeling good and, and I, I, I guess I, there was a hope in the back of my mind that I’d be feeling good, but I, I didn’t, I didn’t appreciate how much better it was to feel good and do that, you know, and, and, and also to just, you know, be with my friend and, um, you know, uh, like, and you never know, that’s the thing too.

[00:19:39] Christina: You never know when you first I guess like travel with someone and you’re with them for like a long period of time like is this going to work out like are we the types of friends who can travel together or not? And, and Aaron and I definitely are which is great. Um, I found that out earlier this, this year too with my friends Catherine and, and, um, Alex when we went to Disney World together.

[00:19:57] Christina: But like, you know, we, we, Yeah, [00:20:00] and like, we had like, you know, we were adults at Disney, not adult Disney fans, to be

[00:20:05] Jeff: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That’s an important distinction, I

[00:20:07] Christina: is an important distinction, but like, when we did that, like, you know, but that’s always a nice thing too, because you never know, um, especially like, when we are adults, like when you travel with people, it’s not like when you’re in college and you can just kind of like…

[00:20:18] Christina: Go along with it. You know, if somebody’s lame and you’re like, okay, it’s whatever, like it sucks if you’re spending like seven days with someone who you don’t really like that

[00:20:27] Jeff: god. No, that’s not something to do.

[00:20:30] Christina: No, no, no. So we, so Erin and I travel well together and, and which was fantastic for both of us to learn, which was great. So, um, yeah, so that was, that’s, that’s my update.

[00:20:39] Christina: Um, I’m feeling a lot better. I’m feeling like myself again for the first time in a really long time. So yay.

[00:20:45] Jeff: Congratulations.

[00:20:47] Christina: Thank you.

[00:20:47] Jeff: I love it so much. That’s amazing. Uh, yeah. Brett, I know you got some business to tend to.

[00:20:55] Christina: The raccoons. I’ve been promised raccoons.

[00:20:58] Brett: yeah, I think, honestly, I [00:21:00] think I wanna make the raccoons a section after Mental Health Corner. We’re gonna, we’re gonna get

[00:21:05] Jeff: might be my favorite sentence, uh, in, in the history of this podcast.

[00:21:10] Christina: of it all.

[00:21:11] Brett: As far as mental health goes, um, things are actually pretty good. I had a brief manic episode a couple weeks ago, uh, for the first time. It was right after I told you guys that I hadn’t had a manic episode for like six months. It

[00:21:24] Jeff: Someone’s listening to the podcast! Heh

[00:21:26] Brett: Literally the next day, literally the next day, I realized that I was manic again, but it only lasted about two and a half days and then it ended.

[00:21:36] Brett: The depression was mild and I have been stable ever since then. Um, in the interest of collecting data about this kind of thing, I can’t remember if I had this out last time we talked or not, but I, I wrote a, a command line tool called Journal.

[00:21:54] Christina: yeah, we didn’t talk about it, but I’ve been following your blog and I’ve been obsessed with it.

[00:21:57] Brett: And you can, [00:22:00] using a YAML config file, you can, you can add questions, um,

[00:22:05] Christina: I love you so

[00:22:06] Jeff: I’m not following you enough!

[00:22:07] Brett: to ask yourself, and you can give yourself, like, numeric ratings on a question, you can give yourself text input, um, you can ask yourself, or you can add, like, weather data, and I just today added moon phase, Data that you can collect.

[00:22:25] Brett: So go ahead.

[00:22:27] Jeff: Pause. So I normally keep up with what you’re doing. I used to look at your, your site every day because I wanted to see what new fucking bananas thing you were working on, but I only just logged on having, having learned just now about journal and I already know how deep in you are because your most current post is historical weather for journal CLI.

[00:22:44] Jeff: It’s like, Oh fuck, I missed a lot.

[00:22:46] Brett: Yeah. Yeah. Because like one of the features is if you miss a day. So like the idea was it stores your info in a JSON structured data file that you can then [00:23:00] use for analysis and querying. That was the important part to me, but it can also store markdown journal entries and it can. Add to day one. So however you want to journal, but to me, the important part was I needed, I was scoring my, our couple’s therapist asked us to rate our own kind of bandwidth and our partner’s bandwidth, uh, daily on a scale of one to five.

[00:23:27] Brett: And I started doing that in day one and then realized I had no way to query or output. These specific numbers, and I couldn’t correlate them to any other factors, so I wrote journal just to allow me to keep this JSON file of all of these numbers and all kinds of other peripheral data that might affect them so I could draw correlations later.

[00:23:53] Brett: So that’s the primary function of journal. Um, it is already led to some [00:24:00] enlightening. Uh, Discoveries. I am interested to see how Moonphase… affects some of these scores because I’m not into astrology. I don’t, uh, at all, at all, not even a little,

[00:24:13] Christina: completely fake.

[00:24:15] Brett: I have noticed that on full moons and the two days surrounding full moons, I don’t sleep as well.

[00:24:22] Brett: And I don’t know if that’s just extra light in the room or what, but

[00:24:26] Christina: the thing. I think that there’s Okay, I’m gonna like be a hypocrite here. I think that like, astrology, like the co You know, like, like horoscope, all that stuff is complete Bunking

[00:24:35] Brett: total bullshit.

[00:24:36] Christina: complete bullshit. There’s nothing. I mean, that, that, that is, that is fantasy on a level that like, I’m not like, like religion.

[00:24:42] Christina: I, I can sort of, I can understand the appeal behind it. I can’t even understand the appeal behind this because it’s literally made up nonsense. Right. But I think that when it comes to like the stuff that can happen with moons and the tides, I do think that can, that can affect how you

[00:24:57] Brett: because it’s, it’s legit [00:25:00] gravitational changes.

[00:25:01] Christina: Yeah.

[00:25:01] Christina: Like, like,

[00:25:01] Brett: could, that could affect, I don’t know, things like mood and sleep, and so, so I’m tracking this, and now I’m collecting this data as well, um, and I’ve been slowly writing, like, Journal itself, the CLI doesn’t offer any query tools, um, like basically you, you get a JSON file that you can um, parse and work in whatever language you like and do whatever you want with.

[00:25:28] Brett: Uh, so I, I write scripts in Ruby that output different correlations and I’d be really curious. It also, I found out there’s like this data view plugin for Obsidian that

[00:25:41] Jeff: that’s a great plug in.

[00:25:43] Brett: it could use YAML. Headers in your journal entries and output different, like, different ways to view your data. So, Journal now, when it outputs a markdown entry, which you can point to your, your [00:26:00] Obsidian vault, um, it includes all of your numeric and weather data as YAML headers that you can then use, uh, Obsidian data view to, to map and…

[00:26:15] Jeff: Because we’re still in Mental Health Corner, I need you to stop saying Obsidian because I’ve had to bar myself from using it because I, um, become so obsessive in using it that I, I lose all of

[00:26:24] Brett: Yeah, I feel like that’s a major pitfall to Obsidian. I, I honestly, like, I test it once in a while, and I see, I see all the potential. It is. It really

[00:26:36] Jeff: awesome! I still read the changelogs.

[00:26:38] Brett: I remember

[00:26:39] Christina: is, and I use it, but like I have the same problem where like I could literally lose 12 hours and, and I’m, I’m not actually even being like Christina hyperbolic. I’m being completely serious. I could lose 12 hours of my life to configuring and dealing with all the little things that I would want.

[00:26:54] Christina: And maybe that would be a good use of 12 hours. I who, who’s to say, but, but, but I could, I can [00:27:00] totally like get sucked down those rabbit holes. I completely understand.

[00:27:02] Brett: I talked to, I talked to a developer from Obsidian early on, I think maybe even before their first public release. And he, he said to me, I don’t see this as competition for NB Ultra. Um, however, it 100 percent is

[00:27:19] Christina: Oh, but absolutely.

[00:27:20] Brett: it is, and it does so much more than NB Ultra even aspires

[00:27:24] Christina: Which I think is a good thing. I think that’s the one area where it’s not competition, right? Like, it absolutely is. And for some people, I think it will replace exactly what they would use in VUltra for. But in another sense, I think this is, it’s almost a good thing for you, where you’re like, okay, if you need to go beyond, I don’t have to build that.

[00:27:41] Brett: And here’s the thing is both apps work with a folder full of markdown files. So you can access your Obsidian data in NVUltra and you can use NVUltra for quick entry into Obsidian. So there is, there’s some

[00:27:57] Christina: path for

[00:27:57] Brett: synergy. Can we say [00:28:00] synergy?

[00:28:00] Christina: no, definitely, right? And look, I think that they definitely, and I think they even admitted it, like, took, you know, things from Indie Alt, right? Was, was definitely inspiration for it. Um, but I think that in one case, cause we’ve talked about the, this before, but yeah, they were like, Oh, we don’t see it as competition.

[00:28:15] Christina: It’s absolutely competition. But, I think they serve different purposes, and for you specifically, Brett, like, I think that it’s actually good that there’s this app that in many ways could go down all the Brett rabbit holes, but you’re not the one building it, and you don’t have to be in charge of it, because you can just make your app your app.

[00:28:33] Jeff: You guys, stop. I opened Obsidian. It’s not good. It’s not

[00:28:36] Brett: is, there is so much that if I could convince, Fletcher, my partner on NVUltra is very, like, you have to absolutely convince him with data that a feature is worth adding before he will consider adding it to NVUltra.

[00:28:54] Jeff: in beta?

[00:28:56] Brett: It is, it is, it

[00:28:57] Jeff: I’m saying that knowing that this is not on [00:29:00] you. I would never say that if it was strictly your situation.

[00:29:03] Brett: So like, there are all these things that Obsidian does that I’m like, Oh my God, we should totally figure out like an even better way to do this thing. And it’ll just be a no go with Fletcher because I can’t. I’m not a logical person. Like I can’t, I can’t debate. I can’t debate. If, if a debate is all about like logic and data, I’m kind of lost.

[00:29:29] Brett: Like I get screwed over when the conversation becomes overly technical, uh, in any kind of debate. Uh, I have, I have

[00:29:38] Jeff: You’re a doer.

[00:29:40] Brett: but I have an ADHD brain that doesn’t retain a lot of facts and, and data points that I can use to prove my argument. So I get. I get, uh, bulldozed very easily when I’m dealing with someone who is very logical.

[00:29:56] Brett: But, anyway, um, so [00:30:00] journal aside, mild manic episode aside, I also DJ’d at

[00:30:06] Jeff: I was gonna ask you about that.

[00:30:08] Brett: At Ed’s No Name Bar. It’s no longer called Ed’s because Ed sold it. But back in the day, this guy named Ed Hoffman, uh, wanted to open, and originally it was supposed to be a wine bar. He was going to open a high class wine bar, but he gave up on that and opened A dive bar, but dive bar in like, in a hipster way, like a very, like a hipster bar with like the Christmas lights around the, the, the liquor selection and everything.

[00:30:38] Brett: And,

[00:30:39] Christina: bar parenthesis aesthetic.

[00:30:41] Brett: and, and he didn’t, he didn’t come up with a name. So it just became known as Ed’s No Name Bar. Um, he sold it. Now it’s literally. registered as no name bar. Um, and I had a friend bartending there and I tweeted, I tweeted, uh, Spotify had given me this [00:31:00] list of recommended songs and I’m like, holy shit, I want to, I want to DJ this for a crowd, um, for anybody who would listen.

[00:31:09] Brett: And so I tweeted that and, and Christian was like, Hey, uh, Ed’s on Thursday. Four to four to eight. So I showed up with my iPhone and my playlist ready to go. Nobody there. And nobody was there for the first three hours of my set. Um, but it was still a blast to sit. at the dive bar and talk to Christian and listen to fucking old school punk rock for three hours and then people finally started showing up but it was at the point I got to about two hours into the playlist and I decided to mix in something other than classic punk uh and it went to like Sage Francis, and Fugazi, and Mudhoney, and K [00:32:00] Flay, and it kind of like, it became a more diverse playlist at that point, and that’s when everyone started showing up.

[00:32:06] Brett: So people missed out, like, the first six songs on the playlist are Rise Above by Black Flag, California Uberalis by the Dead Kennedys, Fuck Shit Up by Blatz, Ever Fallen in Love by the Buzzcocks, I Love Living in the City by Fear.

[00:32:20] Jeff: love living in the city!

[00:32:22] Brett: Yeah, and Living in Exile by Blood for Blood, and then it just goes on with that kind of theme from there, but it was so much fun just to, just to be in a bar, even though there was nobody there.

[00:32:36] Brett: Uh, just to be in a bar, listening to it, yeah, exactly! It reminded me so much of the bars

[00:32:43] Jeff: want to play dice in the corner? I,

[00:32:45] Brett: We’d hang out in bars in New York City, like in, in Queens, and we’d be in this like just shitty bar, almost nobody there, and they would have a jukebox, and we would play whatever Runaways, whatever Joan Jett, whatever [00:33:00] N.

[00:33:00] Brett: W. A. they had, and we would just kind of run the sound system for an almost empty bar, and it did remind me of being on tour. Yeah,

[00:33:11] Jeff: like practice, but we’re in Pittsburgh.

[00:33:13] Rocket the Raccoon

[00:33:13] Brett: you guys want to talk about Raccoons?

[00:33:15] Christina: Yes, let’s talk about raccoons.

[00:33:17] Brett: Okay.

[00:33:17] Jeff: wait. Can I ask a journal question really quick? Um, first of all, this reminds me of, um, Simon. What’s his last name? I’ve talked about it before, but his, um, dataset, uh,

[00:33:29] Christina: yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Willison, Willison.

[00:33:31] Jeff: Yeah, and his, like, personal, uh, lifelogging, uh, sort of attachment, yeah,

[00:33:36] Christina: Simon Willison. Yeah, he’s the best. Yeah,

[00:33:38] Jeff: it has that spirit, but I wanted to ask, like, so, you’re building this stuff in, I assume there’s at least six or seven more things that’ll be built in in the next month, and by the way, without a manic phase, nice work.

[00:33:48] Jeff: Um, and that’s, that’s amazing. I just wanted to point that out. Uh, but is it, is there a way to just like say, I want to hook this API to journal as a user, uh, and, and, [00:34:00] and, and there’s like a pathway to that. Can that be a thing?

[00:34:03] Brett: No, but that, it can be a thing.

[00:34:05] Jeff: Yeah, that’s what I mean. Can it

[00:34:06] Brett: good idea.

[00:34:07] Jeff: Yeah. Because I love that thing of like, you’re, you’re identifying all these things that you wonder maybe impact your mental health and, and I can imagine then my brain racing off and being like, I’m going to go grab a, uh, baseball scores.

[00:34:20] Jeff: Um, I do not watch baseball, but that’s

[00:34:23] Brett: define a key and a question type. And a question type right now can be numeric, it can be an integer or a float, it can be, uh, text, it can be multi line text, it can be weather. Like, you have all these different types. And I could easily Have a type that was API and either through a plugin architecture or just if there was like a URL you could query and, and bring in like JSON or any kind of structured data, then yeah, I could add that. Yeah,

[00:34:56] Jeff: I’ve noticed I’m always a little off when the International Space [00:35:00] Station passes over.

[00:35:01] Brett: there’s

[00:35:01] Jeff: A, that’s an

[00:35:03] Brett: There’s only maybe 200 people using Journal

[00:35:06] Jeff: 201 after this podcast

[00:35:08] Brett: or 200 who have tried it. I don’t know how many kept using it, um, but I have yet to receive any major feature requests, just some bug reports, um, so I will consider that a valid feature request, consider it on the docket. Okay, so when I was, when I was in my 20s, um, My ex wife and I were driving along a road and we saw a baby raccoon and We pulled over because it looked lost and we had just seen a dead raccoon in the road a little bit before, so the safe assumption was that that was the mother and this young raccoon was lost and we picked it up and we brought it home and it had nothing in its eye [00:36:00] sockets, just empty eye sockets, a totally blind raccoon, so Uh, apparently born that way, just, it didn’t look, there were no scars, just born without eyes, and we named it Charlie, uh, a Ray Charles reference, and, um, and, and we cared for it for probably three weeks, um, feeding it and, and loving it, and it be, it was super sweet, like, it would, it would, it would do itself chirping, uh, when you’d come in, and it would feel your face, and, And, like, uh,

[00:36:36] Jeff: Amazing!

[00:36:38] Brett: and it, like, got to know Aditi’s face even better than mine, I think.

[00:36:42] Brett: And, uh, we eventually found a sanctuary in Baraboo, Wisconsin that would take him. And, uh, We went back to visit him multiple times and he would come running up and he would feel Aditi’s face and just start [00:37:00] like chirping like so happy to see her and her nose ring he she he loved her nose ring

[00:37:06] Jeff: Oh god, careful!

[00:37:08] Brett: but like

[00:37:09] Jeff: Yonk.

[00:37:10] Brett: So, have you ever felt a raccoon’s paws?

[00:37:13] Christina: No,

[00:37:14] Brett: They are, they’re human. They’re so soft. They’re, it’s like human skin. And, and they’re very gentle with their paws, and they just, they pat and feel and, and. And wash their hands in water, if you’ve ever seen that, it’s adorable. Um,

[00:37:30] Jeff: paws once, but we can talk about that later.

[00:37:32] Brett: but I, I came to love raccoons and then when I first saw Guardians of the Galaxy, I felt a connection to Rocket.

[00:37:42] Christina: right.

[00:37:42] Brett: Um,

[00:37:43] Jeff: Trash panda.

[00:37:44] Brett: and then I saw Guardians of the Galaxy 3. In which you realize that the story was never about Star Lord, the story was Rockets the whole time, and Rocket becomes, I won’t, no [00:38:00] spoilers, everyone should absolutely see Guardians 3, um, you should probably watch all three in order, but, um, Rockets. Storyline, when you look at it, he goes from victim, like you get his full backstory in Guardians 3 where he is, uh, the product of experimentation and is almost, like, put to death because he has served his usefulness, he goes from victim to advocate to, to hero, to leader.

[00:38:35] Brett: And, and you see, um, you see the progression of him emotionally, and it is… Every time I watch Guardian 3, which is three times now, I sob. I cry the whole way through. There’s a part where, where Rocket almost dies. And I know, after the first time, that he doesn’t die. I know, I know in my heart he’s gonna be okay, [00:39:00] and it’s still.

[00:39:01] Brett: Hits me. James Gunn is a goddamn genius and, and obviously he wrote this story for Rocket. Like, this was Rocket’s story all along, and it has, like, it has led to all of these deep realizations about my own trauma, about my own story, and honestly, like, No, I rarely cry. Like, I’ll tear up a little for an emotional scene.

[00:39:29] Brett: But this is like, I watch Guardians 3 and there are tears streaming down my face. And I have to like, I’m like, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. It’s snotting into my shirt and it’s, it’s amazing. I, uh, have you guys seen Guardians 3?

[00:39:45] Christina: I haven’t, um, I’ve wanted to, is it on Disney Plus now?

[00:39:48] Brett: Yeah, yeah it

[00:39:49] Christina: cool. Alright, I’ll watch it, uh, cause I, I wanted to see it, um, this summer and I just wasn’t able to. Um, but, uh, but I like the first two and, and I always kind of agree with you. I thought that Rocket was like, [00:40:00] uh, a very underrated character and like, should’ve like had more, especially after the second one, I was like, okay, this character fucking rules like this.

[00:40:06] Christina: I, I, I’m, I’m, I’m into the, the

[00:40:08] Brett: Well, he’s got this whole, like, tough guy persona. He has to be, like, the toughest guy in the galaxy, right? But he’s just covering up his own insecurity and pain. And there’s this amazing scene where, I can’t remember the character’s name, the blue guy, Yondu or something like that, um, starts yelling at him about…

[00:40:27] Brett: He’s like, I know who you are. I know what you are. And he starts explaining like all of these things that hit Rocket to his core. And then he’s like, I know who you are because you’re me. And Rocket’s response is, what a pair we are. And like, it’s, it’s so cutting. It’s so biting. It’s so good. Um, I’m going to link a, um, a podcast on Rocket. Um, I can’t remember the name of the podcast, but it’s, uh, um, uh, [00:41:00] Filmmaker and a psychologist and… I want to say a film critic, um, that come together to talk about Rocket’s kind of trajectory through this whole thing. Um, anyone who is at all touched by this, whether you’ve seen Guardians 3 or not, um, go check out this podcast.

[00:41:19] Brett: It’ll be in the show notes. It’s, it’s a YouTube video podcast, a videocast. Um, but it, it is absolutely worth seeing. Even, you could watch it as a prequel too. To seek, to seeing, actually seeing Guardians 3, but yeah, so that’s my raccoon thing. Oh, and Elle is knitting me a raccoon. Um, she started this before Guardians 3 came out because she knew I loved raccoons to begin with.

[00:41:51] Brett: Um, after we saw Guardians 3, I’m like, We are naming this stuffed animal you’re making me, we’re naming it Rocket. And she, [00:42:00] so I have this brand on the inside of my right forearm that is this spiral that I made with a twisted up coat hanger and a blowtorch and it represents, for me, it represents like serious trauma and depression And healing.

[00:42:18] Brett: Like, there’s like a whole story to it, and she’s gonna tattoo, and we’ve talked about like doing couples tattoos, like her taking on this brand as well, in the form of a white tattoo, but she’s gonna put this onto my stuffed raccoon, and I was like, oh my god, that is, that’s amazing. Will mean so much to me.

[00:42:40] Jeff: Yeah. That’s beautiful. Also, if I’m not mistaken, the picture of you in the blind raccoon is gonna be the show art. Right?

[00:42:47] Brett: It will, yes.

[00:42:48] Jeff: I love that photo so much. When I, when I showed my kids, they’re like, is this the same one that had an arrow through its head? I was like, I don’t think so.

[00:42:56] Brett: That did happen, though. Was that a goose?

[00:42:59] Jeff: No, you.[00:43:00]

[00:43:04] Jeff: First of all, thank you for that. Secondly, how the, I don’t think a goose could have an arrow through its head and be walking around. It was a raccoon. You told me the story. You and Aditi actually both told me the story. The one time I met her and the first time I met

[00:43:16] Brett: Yeah,

[00:43:17] Jeff: uh, that, that you looked out your, I think your, your deck sliding glass door and there was a raccoon with an arrow through its head walking around.

[00:43:25] Brett: yeah. That sounds very true. My memory is so foggy, but, um, speaking of pets though, speaking of rescued animals, so, we, I’m sorry, I’m taking up a lot of time here, but, um,

[00:43:40] Jeff: That’s all right.

[00:43:41] Brett: We got a cat from the Humane Society, uh, we went in and we looked and there were a couple of long hairs that we really wanted, but they were like, there’s four people on the waiting list for these already.

[00:43:54] Brett: So we brought home a cat whose name at the Humane Society was Connie, short for [00:44:00] Concrete, having something to do with her origin story, but she had been fostered and returned because was too underfoot, um, she was too loving, and they considered her dangerous to have around the house. So we named her Hazy, short for Safety Hazard.

[00:44:20] Brett: And we spent, we spent a week with her, but she proved to be, um, an exceptional escape artist. Uh, we just spent thousands of dollars getting new windows in her home, and they have these screens that you can squeeze and pop out. And she figured out. How to pop the screens out and I came home from getting groceries and there was a screen lying in our front lawn and sure enough she was gone.

[00:44:46] Brett: She didn’t go far. I sat down on the front porch. She came up. She was, she was wrapping herself around my legs within minutes. So we thought, okay, from now on we can only open the windows from the top because both sides slide, right? [00:45:00] So we open it from the top. Next day, we’re watching a YouTube video in the living room, and we look out the front window in the rain, and there’s a very wet hazy looking in at us.

[00:45:10] Brett: Um, and that’s untenable to never be able to open windows in our house again. So, so we took her back, and when we did, they’re like, So you know those four people waiting for these long hair cats? They all, they all bowed out

[00:45:27] Jeff: Oh my

[00:45:27] Brett: and were like, perfect. So right now up in my room as like the quarantine room, I have two long haired cats.

[00:45:34] Brett: We’re debating on names. We have considered Data and Lore. We have considered Wilhelm and Jacob, uh, the Grimm brothers. Uh, we have considered Niles and Frasier, but right now we’re kinda leaning towards Morris and Dick, or Richard. And, because, like, I had an Uncle Morris, she had an Uncle Dick, and we’re gonna name them after our uncles, the personalities [00:46:00] fit pretty well.

[00:46:00] Brett: One of them is super gregarious. And like, just out there loving you. And the other one hid under my bed for the first 24 hours he was home. And now is like coming out and it’s like being a little more social. But I love these cats. I really think they’re gonna work out. Still have to introduce them to Bod.

[00:46:20] Brett: But I’m excited.

[00:46:22] Christina: That’s great. Thank you.

[00:46:22] Jeff: That’s

[00:46:23] Brett: I’ll shut up now. I have talked for like 10 minutes straight. You guys, you guys.

[00:46:27] Jeff: No, I got nothing.

[00:46:29] Christina: Um,

[00:46:30] Jeff: also close to a gratitude

[00:46:32] Grapptibitching

[00:46:32] Christina: I was going to say, I was going to say, it’s almost Gratitude time. Uh, before we get into Gratitude, uh, I want to do, um, uh, uh, Grapto Bitch and, um, complain a little bit about some, uh,

[00:46:41] Brett: Oh, yes.

[00:46:41] Christina: of the things with macOS, uh, Sonoma, which I have to admit, I look, I didn’t test a lot of the things in the beta.

[00:46:47] Christina: Like I had it in on like an external drive. I did it in VMs. I didn’t do it on like, you know, bare metal or whatever, because I’m not about that life anymore. I don’t have to be, so I’m not, so fuck that. Um. But, okay, [00:47:00] first of all, the default behavior of when you click on the desktop. What the fuck, guys? What the fuck?

[00:47:07] Brett: You don’t like that? I love that.

[00:47:09] Christina: I

[00:47:10] Brett: That makes me so happy. Okay. It makes me happy because I, I added like 10 widgets to my desktop and now I don’t have to use the, the mouse gesture. I can just click anywhere on the desktop and see my widgets. That works for me.

[00:47:26] Christina: which is fine, but like, okay, but didn’t there used to be a way, like, you could do basically two things. Like, one, which is I could click on my desktop and keep my windows there, fine. And then there was also an option where you could just see your desktop the way, with all the widgets, well, everything moved away.

[00:47:41] Brett: like a five finger swipe out on a trackpad would move all your windows. Yeah.

[00:47:46] Christina: And that’s gone now. I don’t have that option anymore. And

[00:47:49] Brett: No, that’s like, you can, oh, maybe better touch tool gives it to me,

[00:47:53] Christina: Maybe better touch

[00:47:54] Brett: trigger it.

[00:47:55] Christina: I mean, I’m going to have to set up a better touch tool to do that, though, on like, across a bunch of [00:48:00] devices. So that pisses me off. Like, don’t fuck with my default behavior like that. Like, that’s number one. Don’t move my cheese. I’m becoming that person. But the real thing that I want to rant about is Okay, it is the year of our lord, 2023.

[00:48:11] Christina: It is almost 2024. What the fuck, Apple Music for Mac? What the fuck? Like, actually, what

[00:48:17] Brett: used it. Is it bad? What, what

[00:48:19] Christina: still, it’s still awful. That’s the point. Like, Spotify is what I use on desktop. I cannot open the music app. I know,

[00:48:28] Brett: Spotify on

[00:48:29] Christina: Yes. Yes.

[00:48:31] Brett: It, like, it glitches every, like, 15 seconds or so my sound cuts out, ever since I installed Sonoma. Oh, it’s been bad.

[00:48:39] Christina: Okay, mine doesn’t do that. So, uh, but they did update the interface in a way that I don’t like, but that’s beside the point. It’s still better than the shitshow that is Apple Music for the Mac, where, I, I, like, I don’t know, guys. Like, what the fuck? Like, genuinely, I, I, I know that you had to kill iTunes or whatever, but, like, did you?

[00:48:57] Christina: Because, honestly, it’s, it’s this [00:49:00] shitty, shitty, shitty app that runs poorly. I don’t know what it is supposed to be. And here’s the worst part. People, And when I bitch about this on, on Macedon or, or Twitter or whatever, but usually on Macedon because that’s where I mostly do my, my, um, tech bitching because Twitter is whatever.

[00:49:16] Christina: Um,

[00:49:17] Brett: it’s called X now.

[00:49:18] Christina: oh, fuck you. I’m never going to, I’m, I’m going to, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, that, that, that should be like the, the preview for our, uh, for, for our episode. That should be the, the, the, the teaser. Oh, fuck. You know, actually it’s called Macedon. It’s called X now. It’s called Macedon. It’s called X now. Fuck you. Yeah.

[00:49:33] Christina: Um, no, no, fuck off for real. I’m never calling it X. Um, Fuck off. No, but like, when I, when I bitch about this on Mastodon, I’ll inevitably get people who will be like, Oh, well, just use the web app. Okay, first of all, fuck you too, because

[00:49:48] Brett: For Apple Music? Oh, God, no.

[00:49:52] Christina: correct, correct, correct. That’s a weird being so far up Apple’s asshole, right?

[00:49:59] Christina: [00:50:00] Honestly. But B, I would, except the whole reason that I use Apple Music, the entire reason why I like it over Spotify. The only thing that it has over Spotify for me is that it has the Decades, and it is plural now, of music that I’ve purchased from, from iTunes in the cloud. Um, not all of which, in, in fact, a fairly substantial amount is not available on Apple Music.

[00:50:24] Christina: And it has the decades, again plural, of music that I’ve uploaded over the years that I’ve gotten from other places that might not be available in Apple Music. So that’s the whole reason that I prefer it, because it has my cloud. It’s basically a cloud version of like my local library that I used to have to carry around all the time, as well as the entire catalog of songs.

[00:50:45] Christina: Otherwise, I would just say, fuck you, I’m using Spotify, they had better playlists anyway. But I can’t because I like having some of my specific, you know, versions and other things. So I primarily use Apple Music on my phone and my iPad for mobile, [00:51:00] and then I use Spotify on the desktop. I would like to use Apple Music on the desktop, but I can’t because it’s a piece of shit because it consumes so much memory and it’s awful.

[00:51:08] Christina: And if I open it, it does all kinds of things and it’s just a bad experience. And so, but here’s the, here’s the kicker. The web version of Apple Music does not let you listen to any of your local library uploads. It doesn’t let you listen to any of your iCloud uploads. So it ruins that for

[00:51:22] Jeff: which you can do on your phone,

[00:51:24] Christina: yes.

[00:51:25] Christina: And on your Mac, but not on the web service

[00:51:27] Jeff: No, I’m saying you could use that everywhere else. And it’s, it’s not,

[00:51:30] Christina: not, not, not there. Exactly. So, so fuck you Apple for, for ruining, like you had the best music app thing in the world and you threw it away, um, more than a decade ago when you ruined iTunes, but like started with that goddamn icon, but like fucking.

[00:51:48] Brett: so much more money on it

[00:51:49] Christina: I, I know, and I don’t care, and like, can you dedicate some of your resources to making the fucking desktop app work so that I don’t have to live in this weird two universes?

[00:51:59] Christina: I’m [00:52:00] sorry, that was, that was a really long rant, and that was

[00:52:02] Brett: No, that’s cool. I, um, I actually don’t use Apple Music on the desktop, so I haven’t, I, like, it frustrated me a long time ago, and Spotify was just

[00:52:13] Christina: Better.

[00:52:14] Brett: Um, I, I really appreciate Spotify, however, I cannot use Spotify on my Mac right now. Um, every, every 15 seconds or so, it cuts out for maybe two seconds and then comes back, not paused, like it’ll skip two seconds of whatever I’m listening

[00:52:34] Christina: god, that’s awful.

[00:52:35] Brett: yeah, so it’s unusable. It’s, it’s absolutely pointless for me. Um, so I have just been listening on my phone and pushing it to my speakers in my office. Um. Through my echo, weirdly enough, um, completely outside of Apple’s ecosystem, but, uh,

[00:52:58] Christina: fuck them, man.

[00:52:58] Brett: it works. [00:53:00] And, and I, I do love Spotify. I really

[00:53:03] Christina: I do too. I think their playlists are so much better. It’s like scary how much better they are. Like, it’s, it’s like scary.

[00:53:09] Brett: for sure. Apple, the last couple of times I’ve loaded Apple Music, I haven’t even seen the For You playlist. I don’t even know if they’re doing

[00:53:17] Christina: No, they are. They are. In fact, they’re making it better. They’re supposed to introduce like a 4U station and they’re trying to do other stuff. But, but they’re so far behind what Spotify does for Spotify. Spotify Discover, but also Spotify will take like, they’ll customize playlists based on your listening thing where they’ll be like, okay, this is a playlist for this type of genre or this thing and we’ll customize it.

[00:53:37] Brett: six a day

[00:53:39] Christina: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:53:40] Brett: genres.

[00:53:41] Christina: But, but even beyond that, they’ll be like, this is a playlist on this thing, but for Christina Warren. So it’s, it’ll be like their own kind of, so really a cross between curated and algorithmically determined based on your history, like, which is fucking brilliant. Like it’s. And I discover so much, I discover so much new music from Spotify that I never [00:54:00] discover new music on Apple Music ever.

[00:54:01] Jeff: Oh man. Yeah. Spotify is incredible for that.

[00:54:04] Brett: I, all, all of the bands I have learned about in the last year have been because they’ve, they’ve created a playlist for me that is about half songs that I have loved in the past or songs that I listen to frequently. And then half songs I’ve never heard, but makes sense based on my listening history.

[00:54:25] Brett: And I have found like so many new bands. All the new bands I listen to are because Spotify suggested them.

[00:54:32] Christina: Same. Same. I like, I listen to all these like, you know, like 20 year olds who are making, you know, like indie lo fi throwback to like, you know, late nineties, early two thousands music. And I’m like, God, I don’t even want to contemplate the fact that this is throwback for you, but I love, but I love it so much.

[00:54:49] Christina: And I’m like, and I find about, I’ve learned about it on Spotify, you know, uh, like Apple Music. You tried, but, and I pay you still, so fuck you, but like, I, I [00:55:00] pay,

[00:55:00] Brett: the, I do the Apple one.

[00:55:02] Christina: same, but I, I, I still think I pay, I pay regardless, but like, because of, again, I like having my local music stuff, but the Spotify stuff is just so much better.

[00:55:11] Christina: It really is.

[00:55:12] Jeff: Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

[00:55:14] Grapptitude

[00:55:14] Brett: All right. We should do Graptitude because I have yet another thing to interject in my Graptitude,

[00:55:20] Christina: Okay.

[00:55:21] Brett: but I’ll keep it short. I promise I’ll keep it short. But Christina, I think you have one to go start with.

[00:55:26] Christina: I do, I do. Okay. So my pick this week is called Interlink, and Interlink is an app from the creator of Pins, which is a cross, uh, it’s a not cross platform, but it’s a Mac and an iOS, uh, Pinboard, um, um, app and pinboard, meaning pinboard dot i n. Here’s the thing with Pinboard, uh, Brett and I have both used it for forever.

[00:55:46] Christina: I don’t know if you’ve ever used it, Jeff, but, um, okay. So we’ve, we, all three of us have used this for forever. I think we’ve all noticed that it has basically been in maintenance mode for a while. In fact, I think that, uh, Message, like, took, like, a year plus off and, like, [00:56:00] didn’t do anything with it. Like, I don’t even know if he was responding to, you know, user requests, because there used to be, like, a monthly thread on, on Hacker News, like, is Pinboard still alive?

[00:56:09] Christina: Um, and so, and so he’s ostensibly, I think, back, but… He’s not putting any effort into it. And that concerns me a little bit as someone who has like tens of thousands of links in this app or, you know, in this service. So it also, I think, concerns the creator of Pins. So he’s created this app called Interlink, which is basically, it’s a link, it’s basically Pins, but with, uh, his own kind of backend, um, to address Pins shortcomings, mostly due to API limitations.

[00:56:36] Christina: And I’m reading this from, um, his, uh, from, from the, the, the Mastodon, um, account. Um, Fast forward to 2023, I’m building a new link organizer to address Penza’s shortcomings, mostly due to API limitation, limited syncing capabilities, lack of bulk link management, batch processing, among others. While I’m aware of similar offerings, bookmarking is so last century, I want something mobile first instead of web first.

[00:56:59] Christina: [00:57:00] This becomes Interlink’s roadmap. Kind of has a whole thread on that. Um, it’s only available in TestFlight right now, uh, for, for Mac and iOS, but it’s really good. It will import all of your links from pins. There’s a bookmarklet, uh, that’ll work on browsers as well as a browser extension for Chrome browsers.

[00:57:17] Christina: Um, and, uh, if you go to interlinkhq. com, there are some docs. Like I, I will be happy to pay whatever he needs to, to charge for this, um, once it’s, it’s ready. Um, I’m, um, I’m, I’m, I’m in, like, this is, this is really great because it’s basically pens but better and with somebody who seems, you know, mostly committed, I think, to actually, uh, keeping this up and running.

[00:57:45] Brett: Yeah, so that, that would be my concern is Pinboard did this interesting payment plan where everyone who signed up paid like a penny more than the person who signed up before them. [00:58:00] So signing up now costs you like, what, like 15 bucks a month? I don’t even know.

[00:58:04] Christina: I’m not sure about that, but with you, what, what it was is that it used to be, you used to be able to buy like a, um, like a, a lifetime plan and, and I think you and I were definitely on that. But I eventually upgraded to. Being able to pay, like, I think to make things like, I pay like a certain amount for archiving, um,

[00:58:21] Brett: Oh yeah, 25 bucks a year.

[00:58:23] Christina: or $33 a year or something like that.

[00:58:24] Christina: And, and I do that just because I get so much use out of the service. And I even asked him, I was like, look, how will you get more money if I, if I, you know, opt into paying you, you know, for an account, um, that I, that I have or buy, you know, doing the, um, archiving. He was like, what you’re doing is fine. So, but that was a couple of years ago.

[00:58:42] Christina: I don’t know what the situation is

[00:58:43] Brett: so, longevity is my concern. As you mentioned, we both have thousands of links in these services. Um, uh, Pinboard imported my Delicious links.

[00:58:56] Jeff: Oh, yeah, same

[00:58:58] Brett: all of, Pinboard’s API is [00:59:00] basically a duplicate of Delicious. Um, that was his goal, was just parody with delicious, and then he did, he stopped. Like, he didn’t, it didn’t need much more than that, and it works fine for me.

[00:59:14] Brett: Um, if I were going to switch to a new service, I would need to know that they were dedicated to… Longevity, and I would need an API similar to Delicious or Pinboard, uh, to access my bookmarks, uh, because I do, I do a lot of command line work with my Pinboard bookmarks, and, and it, it works, like, he can take a year off, I don’t care, like, it works, and everything feels safe.

[00:59:43] Christina: yeah, I think the problem that I had, like, there was a certain amount of, um, stuff where, um, like, uh, people’s, like, backups were not working, and, and so that, that was sort of the problem, right? So,

[00:59:56] Brett: like exports or?

[00:59:58] Christina: like, like, like, like, so that [01:00:00] was, that was sort of the problem, so I, I, I, and I can understand that, so, um, anyway,

[01:00:07] Brett: Yeah, cool. No, I’m excited that there’s, you know, some forward movement in this space because, yeah, nobody should be using browser bookmarks anymore.

[01:00:18] Christina: no,

[01:00:18] Brett: They’re unmanageable. There’s, there’s a limit to, uh, how useful they can be once you have more than, say, a hundred. And. And for like, read later applications, they’re pointless, like, just a waste of, of…

[01:00:34] Christina: 100%. And, and I like matter a lot and I like what they’re doing a ton, but I just, this, these things, like they accomplish different things for me. So, um, like I, I can, I can siphon some things that I use in Pinboard or interlink into matter, but there are some things that are just different. Right.

[01:00:50] Christina: And obsidian is the same way. Like, I can have my, my links ex, you know, different stuff that I want. But like, I, I love, I mean, I don’t know, I, I use Pinboard, um, so much. [01:01:00] Um, and so anyway, Interlink is my pick. Um, I’m still using Pinboard. I’m still, you know, using both because I’m, I’m, you know, whatever. I’m never going to stop using Pinboard.

[01:01:07] Christina: But like, um, but, but I’m, I’m excited about, about Interlink and, and he updated the test flight, uh, just the other day and that’s why I thought of this. And so, um, I, I hope that he continues like working on it because I really like pins and, and he updated pins as well. But like, I, you know, I, I, if he’s getting frustrated with limitations with the API and whatnot, like that says something.

[01:01:26] Christina: And so I’m, I’m glad that he’s scratching his own itch. And I hope that. That this can be something that can be sustainable.

[01:01:32] Brett: I’m still using Spillow even though it is not terribly compatible with more modern operating systems. Pins is good. Uh, Spillow offers a more, um, newsreader like interface that I love. Um, but anyway, I’ll, I’ll add Spillow and, and Pins to this show notes. Jeff, what do you got?

[01:01:55] Jeff: I’ll be brief because I’ve already mentioned it, but I’m actually like in a phase of not trying new apps [01:02:00] too much because of how fiddly I can get. And I’ve had so many deadlines. Um, but I’ve had to, I’ve had to build decks for client work and client presentations over the last couple of weeks and, um, deck set.

[01:02:14] Jeff: I know there’s, it’s not the only thing that does this, but you know, it’s, it allows you to create a deck from Markdown file and my, um, My ability to create a, like an effective and cohesive slide deck that does not have me working on stupid formatting, like is incredible. I also just, I mean, there’s something I’ve never said about what I love about it, which is that, yeah, I’m not working with a client.

[01:02:39] Jeff: And they’re like a large organization and they, a lot of their information is stored in PowerPoints. And, and that is like the craziest way to write, uh, your information because you’re, it’s not even a creative constraint, right? You’re constrained by when the font gets so small that you can’t. Use it anymore in a slide, right?

[01:02:59] Jeff: Or like [01:03:00] you’re, you’re constrained by the time that you waste, um, trying to make that diagram that nobody understands anyhow. Um, and, and what I love about, uh, writing a deck in Markdown is that I can, I can write without worrying about, does it fit on the slide? And I can break up the slides later. And And it’s made me such a more effective sort of like, not just deck creator, but like facilitator with decks.

[01:03:22] Jeff: I hate using decks. I hate them. Um, but I just, I’m so glad for Deckset and, and, and obviously by extension for plain text and Markdown in general.

[01:03:34] Christina: Yeah. Um, and I’ll, I’ll mention once again, DexEdit is great, but I’ll also mention, uh, because I mentioned this, uh, a few Graptitudes ago, IA Presents, IA Presenter rather, which is new at, and does a similar thing from the people behind IA Writer is fantastic. It’s really, really good.

[01:03:49] Brett: I don’t, I don’t know about IAPresenter, but I love that DexSet makes it easy to add builds so you can have, like, uh, line by line, uh, bullet lists [01:04:00] that come

[01:04:00] Jeff: I still never use that. I’m in too much of a hurry because here’s how I create decks. I don’t know how it works, but I always finish my deck two seconds before I log onto the Zoom. And so that’s about when I, that’s about when I want to do that build.

[01:04:12] Brett: I went to, I went to Sal Segoyan’s Command D conference a couple years back, a few years back, and, um, I wasn’t on the speaker list, but then Andy Hidnako canceled. He got sick, and he canceled, and they came to me, and they’re like, hey, can you do, like, can you do the keynote presentation? For, for this. Um, and, and I was like, shit.

[01:04:40] Brett: Yeah. Okay. Um, so I sat down with deck set and wrote out an entire presentation in markdown about O s A script, the command line, apple Script utility, and, and I output a deck that I was able to use on stage. And yeah, deck [01:05:00] set has saved my ass multiple times.

[01:05:03] Jeff: That’s great. And, and IA Presenter looks really cool, by the way. I’m going to download it and just peek at

[01:05:07] Christina: Yeah, you should. It’s really, really good. And, and obviously the people behind it make really great apps.

[01:05:12] Brett: I don’t know how actively DexSet is, uh, developed

[01:05:16] Jeff: I don’t think it is. There’s not really a community around it

[01:05:18] Christina: There’s not that this is, this is why I got into iPresenter, um, and you might’ve been gone for that, that week, Jeff, um, when, when I, uh, talked about this one, but yeah, cause this is, this is one of the ones that I’m, um, uh, I’ve started using it because yeah, I mean, I work at one of, uh, uh, GitHub is not huge on, uh, like storing things in, uh, presentations, but I have to give a number of presentations and whatnot.

[01:05:43] Christina: And, and it’s very nice when I can build them out, um, in Markdown. And then, if I have to go back and format it into something else, I can, but it’s really nice to just be able to do it that way.

[01:05:56] Jeff: That’s awesome. Yeah, yeah, for sure. For sure. Yeah.[01:06:00]

[01:06:00] Brett: of Markdown, my pick for the week is Noteplan. Have you guys ever used Noteplan?

[01:06:07] Jeff: I just started using it again. I do that every

[01:06:09] Brett: Yeah, yeah, I, I had let it go for a few years and then was talking to the developer and got myself ushered into a free license and, and started making more use of it,

[01:06:25] Jeff: It’s on Setapp too.

[01:06:27] Brett: yet. Is it really? Are you sure?

[01:06:29] Jeff: Mm hmm.

[01:06:30] Christina: I see it right now.

[01:06:31] Brett: I could have been using it this whole time and I didn’t know it.

[01:06:36] Christina: I haven’t used this in a long time, um, but, but I’m, I’m into this.

[01:06:41] Brett: I have to update a certain YAML file now.

[01:06:43] Jeff: Also allows you to just work out of a, out of a file of Markdown, you know, like a folder of

[01:06:49] Brett: So like, so like the idea behind NotePlan is you store daily notes and they can contain to do items and it [01:07:00] has an interface. If you start typing a date, it’ll pop up a little date picker for you and you can. Schedule due dates and defer dates, and keep everything in plain text, um, but with like project management capabilities.

[01:07:16] Brett: So you can see all of your upcoming to dos, all of your to dos for the day, and you can create checklists just using real simple Barkdown syntax. Uh, and organize it all in one place. And it is all stored as plain text that you can open and edit in other applications. And it’s, it’s a very impressive, like it’s, it’s just super elegant for, for as kind of complex as the idea is.

[01:07:50] Brett: It makes everything super easy. I

[01:07:52] Jeff: Yeah, it has these,

[01:07:53] Brett: enjoy it.

[01:07:54] Jeff: I love the idea of sort of the day file. So you open up a day file and if you create a to do list in there, it’s really easy to [01:08:00] actually have it moved to the next day. And I actually use it and I, I don’t ever fall into a sustained pattern with no plan, but it does so much that I need.

[01:08:11] Jeff: The thing that I always feel like it has the most potential is because it’s integrated with your calendar, I can go through the week and I can just create, I can kind of use a template to create meeting notes for all the different meetings. And I can, that are going to happen that week. It’s going to, it’s going to live in that day.

[01:08:25] Jeff: So I won’t see it until I get to that day. And then I can also kind of create prep stuff where it’s like, okay, I have this meeting in a, in a, in on Thursday. Here’s what I need to add to my prep for now, whatever. I’ve never been able to really, truly integrate it, um, into my workflow, but like, that just seems like something that should be amazing for

[01:08:45] Brett: just the idea that you’re mixing notes with to do items. Like, you can use something like, uh, Things or OmniFocus, and they focus on to dos, to which you can add notes. But, [01:09:00] Uh, Noteplant kind of reverses it where you’re writing notes, you’re writing journals and notes and, and incorporating to dos into the notes instead of vice versa, which is, once you, once you get into it, it’s actually a really fluid way to kind of document and plan.

[01:09:20] Brett: I, I really appreciate it. It’s a good app.

[01:09:23] Jeff: It’s awesome.

[01:09:24] Christina: That’s great. I like that. I tend to do that myself, and so it’s funny that I, I think I’ve used Notepad before, maybe I haven’t, but now I’m definitely going to be, um, using it because

[01:09:34] Jeff: And, oh,

[01:09:35] Christina: this totally just fits my mind model.

[01:09:37] Brett: So

[01:09:38] Jeff: this is something that’s very actively developed.

[01:09:40] Brett: yes, speaking of Noteplan, um, just a heads up, I am offering giveaways right now on BrettTerpstra. com. Every Monday I’m giving away a different app. Noteplan is coming up. Uh, just to give you a taste, uh, upcoming apps include Timing, Hookmark, Text [01:10:00] Expander, Scrivener, Hazel, Noteplan, Default Folder X, Towers, Solver, Spam Sieve, AppTamer, Kaleidoscope, Curio, Keyboard Maestro, Bartender, MarsEdit, FastScripts, Taskpaper, OmniFocus, Tech, uh, Black Ink, Things for Mac, Bike, FlexiBits Premium, which gets you access to Fantastical and Scheduling and Cardhop, uh, Eagle Filer, Unite 5, Omni Graffle, BBEdit, OmniPlan, and Dropzone.

[01:10:29] Brett: Yes. So,

[01:10:30] Christina: all my favorite apps. This is like a graphics tool smorgasbord. Like, shit.

[01:10:34] Brett: so all of these, all of these will have free licenses, uh, offered to random drawing winners over, like I have them, they’re spread out through April now, um, so check bretterpstra. com every Monday, subscribe to the RSS feed, if you get on the mailing list, you’ll get it. Notifications every week about what’s, uh, what’s being given away.

[01:10:57] Brett: Um, my, my mailing list has [01:11:00] increased by 400 people since I started this series. So I’m pretty psyched about it. Every developer I talked to is like, Oh yeah, cut me in. I’m a hundred percent. And I have not had a single rejection yet. And every time I think of an app, I’ll like email the dev and they’ll be like, yep, cut me in for five, 10 licenses.

[01:11:19] Brett: Um, Omni was like, yeah, we’ll give you three, three pro licenses for every app we have. Um, yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s going to be awesome. So keep track of that.

[01:11:30] Jeff: That’s great.

[01:11:32] Brett: All right. I feel like we’re, we’re now hour 11.

[01:11:36] Christina: Yeah, I think we’re

[01:11:37] Brett: And honestly, zero edits.

[01:11:39] Jeff: No, I can’t. Yeah. Yeah. It’s great.

[01:11:42] Brett: That’s great.

[01:11:43] Christina: yeah.

[01:11:44] Brett: All right. So thanks everyone for listening to this unedited episode of Overtired. You guys get some sleep.

[01:11:53] Jeff: Get some sleep.

[01:11:55] Christina: Get some sleep. [01:12:00]

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