Latest / Hemispheric Views / 105: G’day Bruce!

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105: G’day Bruce! · Hemispheric Views

• Guess what though guys? Unlike both of you, I come prepared every episode with my A-game. And you know what my A-game includes this week? A thematic beverage, I'm glad you asked. What do you know about G'Day Bruce Juicy IPA? I know nothing about it but I know I want one. Look at that, it's got boomerangs, it's got crocodiles, it's got the Sydney Opera House, it's got it all. It's you guys in a can. I want that. Matchless. Does that mean it's without, like, equal? No match? That's exactly what it means, yeah. An IPA is my favourite beverage. Where do you get that from? I got it from the local grocer. Who manufacture it? I think it's Matchless. I think it's the... Yeah, brewed and packaged by Matchless here in Washington. Not DC. And it's good? Not DC, the other Washington. Okay. Yeah, is it good? And it's worth it? You're enjoying it? Well, I mean, it's got everything that is native to Australia on it. It's got capybaras on it, it's got kangaroos. What was that first word you just said? I think it might be a wombat. Can you show us again? Because that's South American. Koalas. Oh yeah, probably not a capybara, huh? It's probably something else. Kookaburra? Palm tree? Do you have palm trees? We do, but I don't like them. Cocos palm. They're terrible. Rats love them. Oh, okay. Well, it's got it all. Provide no shade. Can one of you identify that bridge? Yeah, that is the one that goes over Wollongong Harbor. Oh, okay. Perfect. It's true. Yeah. Love it. Surfboard. Port Kembla Bridge. Made out of steel, I bet. We're proud of it. 'Tis the finest. Yeah, so there you go. Whoever Bruce is, good day. Speaking of A-game, Jason, you know who didn't have their A-game this week? I don't know. Who? The Perth Wildcats. Oh. That's highly unnecessary. Wow. You didn't need to bring that to this show. And I knew that you wouldn't be expecting it, so that's why I did it. Wow. Thank you for looking that up or coming across that in your local, you know, TV in the tire store or whatever, but good job. Funny thing is, I wasn't even aware that it was happening until Andrew sent a photo of the Wynn Entertainment Center. You took it on your TV or computer screen or wherever you're watching it. And it's like, "Oh, we're having dinner down the road from there. Oh, but oh, we're going to have to look it up." And my goodness, the Hawks actually won. So sorry about that. The Wollongong Hawks, surprisingly, have beaten the Perth Wildcats. That's good. Illawarra Hawks. I still get that mixed up because they went through this period where they switched names. They were the Illawarra Hawks, then they went to Wollongong Hawks for a long time, and now they're back to- - and I still get confused. Some of us keep up with the NBL. The Illawarra Hawks have beaten the Perth Wildcats all three times they've played this season, by 18 points, 18 points, and then 16 points. Oh. It's like they missed- - Just make you feel better that last time. They missed a tip in on the buzzer to make it 18 again in this most recent game. The Hawks are just like kryptonite to the Perth Wildcats. Well, look, if it makes you feel better, I used to go for quite a while, we used to go as a family, and I went through their entire loser period. So I don't even get to celebrate this because I kind of moved on and lost interest. That's actually been the majority of their history. So- - True. Except when they played the Wildcats. Pretty unfair to bring that up, Martin, so thank you. That was great. That was a really, really wholesome way to kick things off. I like it. And he's going to have the shits with me for the rest of the episode and he's editing. So- - Yeah, I will. Oh dear. I will. Well, since I'm grumpy, I'm just going to carry my grumpiness on for this next little comment I want to make. And that is that I do not care about Apple Vision Pro. Cool. So what's going on with this new notes app from Microblog? I had a whole rant. You just can't- - Never mind. Go on. No, it's- - Go if you like. No, it's not worth it. - No one cares. It's not worth- - It's no one cares. It's just the- - Okay, I'm going to say one thing. I realized that to many, I probably come across as an entitled white guy. I recognize that, but I do try and be aware and somewhat self-aware of that and try and downplay it. I don't feel like I'm particularly entitled, but I've certainly benefited more than others. But there's a level of entitled white guy-ness that is coming across at the moment around spending three and a half US grand plus all the extra bits and pieces on a device that has no real practical application at this point. And just to talk about it for hours and hours, especially when some people have previously said, "Oh, the economy's in a hole and we can't get the same level of advertising in our shows and it's difficult and we need listener support." Oh, woe is me. But you can still afford to go out and buy a three and a half grand Apple Vision Pro. And there's just a level of entitlement that I am really not comfortable with. - And seen. Did you ever rebuttal on that, Martin? You looked like you had some hyphens. - No, no, no rebuttal. I can agree with the point particularly about practicality. It kind of reminds me of when the iPad was first announced to people, once they got past the whole sanitary pad joke, right? Which was kind of puerile anyway. That whole thing of, is this thing justified? Does it have a need to exist? And Steve Jobs got up on stage and made that whole point of it fits between the laptop and the phone and okay, you can accept that philosophy or not. But the Vision Pro is interesting in the sense that now I haven't used it, I can't comment on the quality of it or pass through and motion blur and motion sickness and all that. But interestingly, it seems at this point, at least in the first generation, to be a little bit of an unnecessary extra thing, right? It's not really filling any gap. It's more of a vision of the future, so to speak. So yeah, I don't think it really has much of a purpose at the moment, which I don't want to say it's concerning, but I always think about that Apple ad, the one with all the animations and the text really kind of subtle and minimalistic that said, "There's a thousand no's for every yes." I like that one. I kind of wonder if this really is a yes. Maybe it will be a yes as time goes on, just like they kind of found direction with the Apple Watch over time and settled on what buttons and features do what. But this doesn't feel like an instant yes or necessity on launch. So maybe that's why it's also a bit fatiguing. It's like, "Okay, we've got past that now." I think Jason's checked out because he wanted a streak of never mentioning the Apple Vision Pro. Sorry, I was reading RSS while you guys were talking. Are you done? That's all I have to say. I don't really mind. I think it's technically very interesting. It's very impressive, but there are some social things to iron out. That's as much as we've got on that topic. New notes app from Microdot blog. What's a... Oh, by the way, just so everyone's aware that's listening, because I know this has been like top of mind. There are emoji back in the notes now. So unlike last week, where we had no idea who put what in the notes, now we know. So... I don't want to stop you from putting emoji against notes that were never put there by someone, but we'll get to that. That's not a relevant comment right now at this point in the notes. No, we're still pretty much towards the top. So we're just going to continue down. There's another basketball from the losing team, which is the Perth Wildcats. Do you want to go ahead with that? Yeah, sure. And people will probably know our love of the micro.blog service from Manton Rees. He's added another feature for micro blog premium users, of which I am one. I think we all are one of those. If not, we should be, because it's part of our origin story, micro.blog. So thank you to them. So Manton has done a nifty new thing and released a notes app. He's called it Strata. And really it's an extension of the platform, really, in that it operates in much the same way as you would write a blog post. You have a text box and you have markdown capability. And it has a companion iOS app. And I think an Android app is coming soon. Not that I really care, but that's on the way. And it's end to end encrypted. So you do have to futz around with getting your key configured to begin with. And there was a little bit of jankiness when I first signed up, but it was day one. And I think there's already been some improvements to the user interface and how that goes about working. And kudos to them. That's a confusing issue at the best of times. So I don't really hold it against him that that could be a bit complicated. But the good thing is it is giving end to end security. So your notes are totally encrypted. So they are yours and yours alone. Unless you decide that you want to share it and you can share it by giving it it automatically generates a long string of random URL-ness. So that while it's then is published on the web, it's still not an easily findable URL. So it's kind of like small scale sharing. Security through obscurity kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. You know where my mind actually went when I saw that little mention, that feature? You know how we do the craft hemispheric news newsletter? Yes. Obviously, that's more fleshed out maybe as, you know, a web page. I think I get the idea. And I don't mean that as a knock on what Manton's done. I think Micro.blog's version is a bit more minimalist. I mean, you could put images and stuff in there maybe. But it feels like more of a focused maybe alternative to doing something like that. Not saying we would, but I don't know. Potentially though. You know, there might be experiments like that out there. People might use it in ways like that. I assume because ultimately it's a web page. If you wanted to muck around with CSS and all that, you could design a style, a theme for those notes. So yeah, it is very simple and straightforward. I don't know if I've got a particular place for it in my life. I already have like 6,000 note-taking apps. But the one thing where I'm thinking where would this be useful is in cross-platform note-taking. So sometimes I just need to take a note on my Windows PC at work. And it's always a bit like, well, how, where do I do this that will sync? Because I've got OneDrive here on this computer, but I've got iCloud predominantly at home. So that doesn't have, do I go into like the fast mail interface and try and do something and that's not great. I thought, well, maybe this is a nice way if I just need to move a note and have it on both platforms, really low effort way of doing that. And you don't have to install anything because it's just a web page. So I just want to say, well done, Manton. Thank you for continuing to build out micro.blog. I look forward to seeing where it goes and I'll add it to my collection of notes. Oh, and just a quick shout out to meandering on micro.blog because he actually suggested that we talk about this on Hemispheric Views. So thank you, meandering for giving me the prompt. I mean, I agree quickly on this. I have too many places where notes, you know, words in general are floating around. But the moment I saw this, I thought, how can I justify the addition of another one? Because I want to use it. I just love the fact that you've got, you know, whether it's bookmarks or I'm not a frequent user of this, but like the bookshelves and the notes, like he's built this out so beautifully that in my mind, there's this utopian future where my world is kind of micro.blog, you know, and I wanted to move other blogs and stuff just into micro.blog, but then things were going to be broken. So I don't know, Manton, I'm so happy that you're doing stuff like this, but it also kind of enrages me that I can't easily move certain things or other stuff's happening. I'm kind of breaking my brain trying to imagine this future. Well, let me just say that my latest experiment with Obsidian is now entirely over. There's definitely not an app for me. I gave it another red hot go. You're on Agenda again? Oh, I actually am using Agenda again. I found a new way to use it. I pay attention. But I just want to say generally, Apple Notes, surprisingly good app. I like the sharing. That comes in pretty handy. Apple Notes, amazing. Do you remember there was like a year to two years of this podcast where you both used to heap shit on me going, "Martin's an Apple Notes user." And it's like, not really. And now suddenly you two are number one fans of it. No, I'm the number one fan. He's number two. Oh, you are? And Andrew's like a new fan. All right. I'm really keen to hear about this next item on the list, Jason, because you sent me one or two messages about this. I think you were avoiding burdening Andrew with this in the Hemispheric Views group chat. Yeah. This camera stuff. Unless, Andrew, do you want camera updates? I can send you camera updates. We can include you. I used to be camera. I'm not a camera guy anymore. I'm just not. I used to be a hobbyist camera guy, but not anymore. Yeah. Well, this is something that Jason brought up, but I didn't get to hear the rest of it. So I'm keen to see where this goes. Part version is I, we, we all know that I, I think I talked about it last time. I'm using a Sigma camera now. I've got some Sony lenses that I no longer need, so I'm selling them off until I found something very interesting. One of the lenses that I had was a Sigma lens, which for those that don't know, Sigma makes lenses for all different cameras. That's their thing. So I had one for a Sony mount and I randomly came across a website that said that Sigma does a mount conversion process. It's like, what, what does that mean? How's that even possible? That doesn't even make sense. So I looked into it and apparently what they can do is for various lenses, you can imagine they have a lens, they sell it for Sony, Canon, et cetera. Other other vendors. The lens is basically the same. It's really just the mount that's different. You buy a lens based on a mount if you're not familiar with how these things work. So they do a lens conversion or a mount conversion where they will take a Sony E-mount and convert it to a Leica L-mount, which is what I need. Turns out that's a thing. They can just do that. You just send it to them. They'll swap out all this stuff on the back to make it the other mount and send it back to you. And now you have the same lens with presumably the now correct mount. So I have done that. I have boxed it up. I have shipped it off to them. The process was a little 1990s feeling if I'm honest. It was a web form. Good start. Okay. This is 2024. The web is pretty useful for those things. But it was one of those web forms where it's like basically just you're filling out a PDF to print in a website. Okay, cool. So I did that. I printed it out. And then you just ship it off with a piece of paper in the box. That's it. That's your paper trail. Literally that's your paper trail. There's not a online form to check. There is not a correspondence email. It was just put it in a box with a piece of paper, ship it to New York, and hope for the best. So I've done that. It will arrive on Monday, presumably. You know, UPS God's willing. And I guess they'll do some stuff and then ship it back. That's all I can say. I don't know. I had no idea this was a thing. I think it's super cool if it actually works out. But yeah, there you go. Instead of selling it, I just got the mount swapped so I can keep using it. Kind of neat. I had no idea that was a thing. Isn't that one of the joys that Americans take for granted, Martin? That they can just ship something within their country. This amazing thing happens and it comes back to them. Imagine if we wanted to do that. Where would we have to ship something to? Well listeners can go back in our archive and enjoy your iPhone saga as evidence of Not good. That was distressing. And that was just, I ordered something and waited for it to arrive. That was the most basic standard purchase possible. From the largest company in the entire world. Well without going too far into the whole vision and pros thing, I don't know if you saw what? Wait, wait, wait. Martin, did you get your stickers? No, not yet. But I think that kind of adds to your narrative. But I haven't checked the letterbox in about six months. So. The snail's probably eaten them. That was an exaggeration. But I do forget about the letterbox. Anything that comes in an envelope is kind of dead to me. Go check your letterbox. Okay, thank you. All right, I will. Sorry. I'm not trying to avoid it. The letterbox is like an everyday Christmas. Like, I love checking the mailbox every day. It's like, I'm checking that thing four or five times a day. Do you think a bill's like presents to you? It's just like a mystery. It's like, what's going to turn up? He gets a bill. He gets to put it in his spreadsheet. And then he gets to mark that it was paid in his spreadsheet. It's council rates. Big day. I already know they're coming because I've been budgeting in YNAB for them for the last 12 months. There's no surprise. Anyway, all I was going to say is it's like, you know, James Thompson of Pcalc being sent the wrong Vision Pro by Apple. I don't know if you saw that online. There was a Mastodon post about it. Got sent the wrong one. Now it's this whole international saga of trying to resolve it. So you're not the only one, Andrew. How did he get sent the wrong one? It's just one thing. I think there was like a customer mix up or something. I saw a post about it. But like, isn't it just the same product? It's not like they're customized. Well, no, different storage tiers. Oh, okay. Got it. Not to mention, I think there's also the Zeiss lens thing. I don't know if I don't think that was an issue, but there's another customizable thing. Gotcha. Anyway, back to the lens mount thing. I want to ask you, Jason, because I didn't know this was a thing, but you went from one full frame system to another. So you went from Sony to Sigma in this case. If you had gone to an APS-C setup, would they still do this for you? Or is it only if you have the same kind of sensor? I don't believe so. I think they'll only do conversions based on like other offerings of that lens set. So like if that lens comes in Sony, Leica, and Canon, I think you're safe to go across any of those. But I don't think you can just willy nilly pick whatever you want. So I think there was very little information about this. Everything I found went to a web page that didn't exist anymore, because I think they're not like offering this anymore. But if you want it, you can still get it. So because I emailed the support people and they're like, oh, yeah, just go to this. Again, like I said, this PDF form on the web and like fill it out, print it, and then cross your fingers for two weeks. You're never getting your lens back. I may have just shipped a lens to like some guy's house. I'm not sure. You'll get some manual focus on anything sent back. If I get anything back, I'll be thrilled as long as it connects to my camera. I'm pretty happy. Well, best of luck. I look forward to hearing it. And actually, since I saw you were talking about lenses, I've added something. I got myself a new one, but I'm actually quite proud of myself in this regard. So this is the Olympus 12-40mm f/2.8. Absolutely loving it. Now, this is not a new lens. I must be up front. This is actually like the previous version of what's now the OM system, two of these, right? But I was particularly... Babs is going in the background. Hi, Babs. You probably can't hear it through the Zoom recording, but this is mine. Zoom got it out. Babs, so annoying. But I was proud of it. I was proud of myself in this regard because I've never done this before, but I actually haggled for this lens. I actually put pressure on a salesperson. Can you imagine a Martin haggling? Well, I found a good technique for it. High pressure. That's not normally my thing. What part of the body would be good for putting pressure on somebody? I'm just trying to think. Would it be like a lower extremity, maybe? I had the hand around the neck. They were like pushed up against the camera cabinet. It was full of... The hand is okay, but I think there's probably another area of body that would do a better job. It's like a leg hand. Anyway, we're digressing here. So I took notice of the fact... You see, JB HiFi doesn't really sell Olympus or OM stuff anymore. They have one lens for some reason. I don't know who that's helping. But I noticed that they had this display unit in the cabinet for weeks. Now, I wasn't visiting all the time, but if we ever went in for something, I got an SD card or had to pick something up. I was like, "That's still there." So I went in and I basically said, "That's been there for months. That price is too high. I would like to give you this much for it." And they were like, "Oh, oh, oh, oh." And it's amazing how much you can throw off a salesperson if you start throwing around accusations or falsehoods in a rush. And they were just like, "Oh, oh, oh, you'd probably know more about it. I don't use that system. So how much do you want to give for it?" So it was $900 and I said, "How about $350?" And they went, "Oh, that's too low." And I said, "Well..." And they went, "Oh, we could do $500." And I said, "Done." Martin! So they slashed $400 off just because I rushed them. And I had a $150 gift card. So there you go. I could just imagine Martin saying, "I'm walking out. I'm walking out this door. I'm leaving right now." Yeah. "I will take this foot off your neck and walk out right now." But they were highly compliant. They were very helpful. Wow. There's a big poster of Martin in the store now saying, "Do not serve this guy." Yeah. "Beware this foot." Oh, look, I was polite. I'm just hamming it up. But the point is that you go in and you're normally... I don't know, Andrew, you've kind of said this as well, like with your kebab man in that episode of One Prime Plus. You're obliging. You want to be polite. You don't want to cause a fuss. And it's like, "You know what? This thing isn't selling. And we need to be assertive here because that's just gathering dust. That's a crime." So I like to think that I assertively and politely gave some more space in their camera cabinet. Good for you. Perfect. You released their capital. It's fantastic. That's off the books now. Exactly. And look, otherwise, it's the first lens I've ever had that has a constant aperture through a zoom range. The manual clutch is fantastic. Beautiful red focus peaking in the camera. And yeah, I don't want to bore people too much about it, but I just want to put it out there. You know what? If you don't know what a basketball was, give it a go and see where it takes you. I've got a basketball down at the bottom of the list of our running sheet today. Okay. Can I escalate that to right now? Okay. Because I feel like it ties in. I feel like it ties into both Martin's haggling situation and also with the kind of in camera corner. Okay. So today I was doing the grocery shopping. So I did my shopping at Aldi. Martin, I know you know about Aldi. Jason. I'm very familiar. Yeah. That's the German grocery store. Perfect. Yeah. Perfect. Normally smarter shopping. I feel like I've been there basically. Yeah. So I was doing my shopping and now I am not a sucker for the special buys. Oh, special buys. I'll push my trolley down there and I'll have a look because I'm curious to know what they have each week, but I'm not going in there going, I'm going to pick myself up a special buy. Pickled onions next to a 32 inch monitor. That's what there is. Hmm. Yeah. There was a 32 inch TV today actually. I didn't buy it. But I found something that may just unleash the power of my M1 and once again, relegate my iMac to the library. Oh God. In the Aldi special buy. In the Aldi special buys. How, how in the ever loving hell did you being in Aldi mean that the iMac is now once going back to the library? This is the amazing thing. So I was compelled to buy it and I looked at it and I was like, is that a good price? $29.99 or whatever it was. I was like, let me just check. Let me check online. JBI Fi, $79. Officeworks $79. Not if Martin's buying it. He's getting that down to a clean $15.99 I think. So what I bought from Aldi special buy is. Can we guess? Do you mind if we guess? Yeah, sure. Let's make a game of it. This is a shop that when I visited still has like DVD spindles in it. So I'm totally thrown off. Think about it. Something that will unlock the M1. It's just a pack of floppy disks. I'm going to guess that it's a, um, the only thing that makes any sense to me would be a camera of some kind, like some kind of webcam, because you're always mad that the, the laptop is pointing up at your face. And that's why you like the iMac because it's more like directly at your face. So that would be my guess. Okay. Martin, do you want to take a guess or are you just passing? Is it some sort of USB-C extensible hub dock thing that opens up? Because I know like with M1s, for example, like I have a certain number of USB-C plugs. So anyway. They're both excellent guesses. Both excellent guesses. But the winner is. The winner is actually no. Jason burk. Camera corner. That's a C720HD webcam or two seven, two 70. It's like 720. Not what I expected. It's 720P, but it's the model number is a C270. So figure that one out. That is a bit confusing. Better than the other way around though. Imagine if it was the model number 720 and it was a 270P camera. I did check with smart. Yeah. And it still is in the box. So the potential has been untapped. Yeah. It's a widescreen HD 720. Crisp HD 720 video calls with 55 degree defold and auto light correction and a mono noise reducing mic. Clear conversations up to 1.5 meters with a noise reducing microphone. Oh, so you can record with that. So what I was thinking. Yeah. So the exactly right. You got it in one Jason. The problem has always been. I have an external monitor, but it doesn't have a webcam. So I have my MacBook. I also thought I may potentially be able to relocate my Mac mini M1 and do like that kind of setup because now with the monitor and this powerful Logitech webcam, I may be able to use the M1 to its full potential. God, I hope so. Which will mean the iMac once again, library. What do I do with it? I think you load up front row since it's of that era and get your little white magnet and remote off the side and you run some front row from it. Just on that. I loved that. And there were people who used to visit the family home when we had that Intel Core Duo iMac from 2006. And I like, why have you got an iPod shuffle stuff to the side of your computer? And I'm like, oh, let me show you what this actually is. And I like, OK, let's get out of here now. Meanwhile, the R2D2 USB hub in later years that was next to it was going next to the mic. What kind of house is this? And then the DVD, eventually the drive would get kind of like out of whack and it would just start shooting it out the side. Yeah. Instead of actually coming out nicely. Right. When you went through the checkout, was this one of the new self-serve checkouts that they've been putting in Audi or you took your horses? You're making me angry. No, I had a good experience at Audi. My Audi does not, my local Audi does not have the self-service checkout things. Infuriates me that they're doing that because that was always one of their great features that they had people. My guy got to the end of my checkout and my guy said, good packing. That was really fast. And I said, you're welcome. I understand that it's part of the business model. So you'd go pretty well in Berlin then because they're ruthless there. It's like, keep up or you're out. Oh, it annoys me if I'm behind somebody and they're like carefully organizing stuff. No, there's a pack bench behind you. Don't pack your trolley at the checkout. That's this is why you're getting cheap prices. Do that stuff somewhere else. You guys need to calm down over there. Getting way hyped up about shit that doesn't matter. I was going to ask you, did you proudly go up to said checkout man and say, oh, I've got this camera because dot, dot, dot, and kind of explain or enthusiastically relay some information about it. I didn't. Why didn't you haggle him down to $6 is my question. Look, Jason, I was just excited I got the deal at all. It was hidden underneath some Logitech keyboard mice combos, literally underneath. The K380? Yeah, that's the one. And there was only two left. I got one of the last two. So I feel like I've got a real good deal here. I can't wait to unleash it. I just, I'm just a little bit, I guess, distraught that you couldn't find the time to get this all changed up and set up directly before recording. Well, I wanted to, but I didn't want to be in that. I feel like I really need to do this properly this time. And I don't know whether I wanted to use the Mac mini, which would mean relocating the Thunder Bay drive array. I know that's the thing, but the mini is just sitting there so underutilized. Can you say Thunder Bay drive array quickly five times? Thunder Bay drive array. That is actually challenging. I've got it wrong. Drive away, no more to pay. Well congratulations on your potential removing of your stuff. Look, I know people are interested in my iMac. So I just want to keep them engaged. It's all the internet's talking about. I have a suggestion for a recurring segment on this show, right? And I'm sure we're not the first podcast to do it. I imagine there's others, particularly in Australia who might do this, but if anything ever comes up in the special buys again, Andrew, whether it's you or me, I don't know what Jason's situation with LD is, or maybe if there's something equivalent. If you find something quirky in the special buys, whether you bought it or not, feel free to bring it to the show. Cause I think the people need to hear it. That's good. Yeah, we'll do it. Sorry. I know you're trying to finish that segment. I just want to say, this is a consumable. I'm not putting this on the asset register. I'm not depreciating this over time. I've just bought it. I've called it, I've put it in YNAB as groceries because everything else from LD is grocery. So I've not split it out. It's just gone. Like, yeah, I'm not tracking this in the spreadsheet. No, that's fine. Yeah. When you're keeping the books, you can cook them any way you like. I tried some new software. I was a little concerned that like the only option in my life seemed to be iCloud. So I was like, what else is out there that does like stuff? Spoiler, nothing. So I'm back at where I started. I'm not even going to list what I tried because then I have to go and get the links to put in the show notes. That's how bad and how many things I tried over the last two weeks. So you're talking about sync stuff. Is that what you mean? Everything. Sync.com. Box.com. Top to bottom. Everything. I tried. You didn't try anything like OneDrive or OneNote or something, did you? Because that's just depressing. Well, I mean, come on. Do you respect me at all? Like, how could you even? I do. But maybe there was something forced upon you from others, you know? Proton Drive. Bingo. I did try that. Tried the whole Proton gambit. Turns out not for me. So yeah. It was a very depressing journey. I tried a lot of things. A lot of things are really not very good. And it turns out what I have is what I should be using. So there you go. Why did you do it? What were you dissatisfied with iCloud about? It's more of a concern of, is this really the only option? Or am I just telling myself it's the only option? It was kind of a reflective moment, you know, of like, I use all this crap and like most of it's fine or good or really good. But if I needed to move away for one reason or another, depending on which way the winds are blowing, could I? Turns out if I needed to, it would be really painful. And that is not great. But yeah. So there's other stuff out there and you can try it, but it's not great out there. I was going to say your point about if you ever had to move away reminded me of something. Something that just plays on my mind a bit is photos, like iCloud Photo Library. Because you think about it, it's pretty much, I mean, of all the things that you ever own or manage, other than human life, like family, your photos of those people are the most important thing that you'll ever look after or not want to lose. Like you lose some documents, that's a bit annoying, but photos, they're the worst. It's the only thing that's unreproducible. Yeah, exactly. And you can back up and sync through iCloud or maybe have Backblaze or any of those things. But something that's always kind of made me nervous, ever since they went to iCloud Photo Library, you know how they changed how like the directories work or all of those folders when you reveal in Finder or show the package contents, it used to be like very dated and orderly and then suddenly it's just a bunch of strange numbers. It's a database now. I've thought, yeah. And that kind of makes me a little bit uncomfortable, maybe not for my lifetime, because I can't see Apple kind of collapsing anytime soon, but what happens after that? And yes, they have the digital legacy things. I'm aware of that. I've done that through, you know, iOS and you do next of kin, but that idea that kind of like you might want to have text files with Markdown or something or just plain text so that you're not a slave to Microsoft Word or whatever. I kind of think about that for photos. Now iPhoto and then photos. Sorry if I'm taking over this topic a bit, but you really unlocked this in my brain. Early on, it was like, oh, you've got that kind of directory that's very, very easy and dated now. It's that database, like you said, Jason. But if something goes wrong, what would be the alternative? Now, I always used to frown upon Windows people who used to just have their folders of photos, right, and thought that's horrible. And it still sounds like not the best idea on the Mac. But ever since they released that gallery view in the finder, do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah. It's kind of like, I don't think I would ever do this because I'm firmly entrenched in iCloud photo library and stuff. But I do imagine what would have been like if this had been earlier in my lifetime or in the past where you could just meticulously manage your photos in named folders. If you look at the gallery view for browsing photos, it's kind of like a faux iPhoto or photos in the finder. And you would totally have your manually named and easily moved around photo library. Do you think you could ever move to something like that since you were talking about trying new software? Could you move your photos somewhere else? Photos was part of this journey over the last few weeks, actually. Right. Yeah. For that exact reason. I used photos and I use some plugins to photos and it was like, is there just like, is there somewhere else where I could do this? And what I was really hoping to do was that I was hoping to have like a pre staging area, if you will, where I could import a bunch of crap, kind of pre sort and then put into photos. So I wasn't just constantly adding to a junk folder of photos because we take so many dumb shit photos of groceries or like, you know, Oh, I need to like put my phone behind the thing and grab like a serial number off of, there's just a bunch of crap. And so much of our photos is crap. So could I separate out like actual photos from just kind of day to day garbage? And I tried so many different software things for photo management. God, it was just a nightmare of trying to deal with that. And the, the pure simplicity of take a photo with a thing and have it show up on all my stuff. There's a lot to be said for how incredibly wonderful that is when you can take a photo on any of your 50 devices or whatever. And magically it's just everywhere. Like that's pretty awesome. So to go back to like pull out SD card, put into computer, manually import into like Lightroom or whatever, and then like hope that that goes up to some Lightroom cloud, like it's just annoying. So yeah, I'm back on photos. Well, I thought about it more because you're familiar with PhotoMator by Pixelmator and they won awards, you know, late last year and everything. Well, they've been testing this kind of, you don't have to have photos in your photo library or the photos app to edit them. You can actually have like a files browser and it will come up. And I just thought if you were to start from scratch and yes, there's that, as you expressed perfectly that convenience of having it in that library that syncs everywhere. If you were to start from scratch, keep everything meticulously named and ordered in the finder and then have an app like PhotoMator, which doesn't have all the baggage and subscription cost of something like Adobe's offerings. You could actually have a beautifully organized finder-esque photo lifestyle with a nice gallery view and third party editor. You could do that if that were your thing and then not worry about what the future holds for your photos quite as much. But yeah, I think I'm too far into it now. It's a tough thing to get out of. And it's also the annoying part of like the last piece that something like photos is missing is just showing all that stuff on the web. Let me say if those are public or private categories to show as, you know, why do I need to now take stuff out of photos, go put it into SmugMug or Flickr? Like just let me check a box to say make public gallery. Why is that not a thing? Beyond what the Shade Album thing does? Yeah. You want more than that? That's like okay, I guess, but it's just so limited in terms of what you can do. Yeah, it's just like a real missing piece. But even outside of that, there's just, I found nothing that was not prohibitively expensive if you're not like selling your photography. You know, I'm not going to be spending $800 a year for like a photo manager thing. Just it's not going to happen when, you know, again, we fall back into like, oh, well, I already have photos. Oh, I already have iCloud mail. Oh, I already have notes from mine. Like I just have all these things already. But the photos one is especially difficult. I don't even know how I would migrate everything to your point. It would have to be folders, but that would be a monumental amount of work to move all that and like have it all work. And then you have search like in something like photos, I type in Andrew and like his face pops up and it shows me every photo I've ever seen with him in it. To do that with like the Finder, that's not going to happen. So then I still rely on like a third party thing. So. No, I totally get it. I actually have zero issues with photos in terms of usage. I think it's unbelievably good. It's actually say what you will about the Apple, you know, people have their complaints. I think it's one of the best things that Apple does. It's more the and maybe I shouldn't worry about this, but what happens after I'm dead? Or how do people interact with this, even if there's that legacy tool? I don't know. It's it's not like passing an album physically onto somebody. Yeah, I'm not necessarily looking to move today, but I'd rather be proactive about it and sort of already know what's out there than to then all of a sudden be put in the position that, oh, shit, I need to move stuff. And now I'm just going to like panic, pick the wrong thing. That's what I'm most worried about. And like you said, is Apple going to die tomorrow? Very unlikely, but like that doesn't mean they won't die like to me. So that's like a different angle, like just because they don't go away doesn't mean that I like our relationship won't die for some other reason. So this all sounds very morbid now, but no, but it's good to think about because we're pouring our lives into these digital like storage vaults. And if you want to move away for whatever reason, they need to make it easy to do so. It might be under five different menu clicks and everything's going to die. And you're going to, you know, you know, kind of like I see all the time on LinkedIn now because I have to use it for work. It's like, oh, the link you clicked on is about to take you somewhere else on the web. And I go, well, that's what I want. That's what the web is. I don't want to scare me. Yeah. So there's going to be layers like that that you have to get through. But anyway. Do I look more handsome now? I noticed that your view changed. Did you literally just hook up a camera while you were doing this? It's totally changed my, my head's a lot closer. Yeah. Look a bit fatter. So yeah. Logitech. Good to me. Logitech versus the iMac camera. Can you set up both somehow so we could see, I wonder if we could see both at the same time. I think I can do that, but I can probably, I can probably just switch between them. Like, yeah, let's do an A cam, B cam. This is A cam. B cam. Oh wow. You got a lot different angle. So I get iMac, iMac, Logitech. That's that's tight. That's really tight. It's really tight, isn't it? I don't know how to, I don't know how to like zoom out. Actually this angle makes it look like you're running a corporate seminar. You might want to back out a little bit. Welcome to Hemispheric View's LinkedIn Learning. Today we're going to be talking about lean manufacturing. Oh wait, it's just like a regular episode. I don't know why I said that. Can you all see my slides? Can you see my slides? Yeah. Okay. Andrew, you're on mute. You're on mute. We can't hear you. So I'm just going to, can you, I can't take control of your screen. Oh, it's not, oh the button's moved. Oh, wait, how do I share again? Is it chat? No, wait. Oh, I ended the meeting for everyone. This camera is a little close, a little close. I have a question for you guys. Are you ready for this question? It's a very hard hitting question. Have either of you been to Alice Springs? No. Wow. Interesting. I was hoping one of you was going to say like, oh yeah, we went there on holiday. Uh, no, never been there. Not out of avoidance, I'd love to go to the Northern Territory. I wouldn't like to go to Alice Springs. Okay. Well that's a bummer because I was hoping one of you had been there because I posted a video in our discord recently of this guy talking about maps and that thing where like at certain zoom levels of maps, like certain cities always show up, but sometimes it's like that's not the one you would expect. And Alice Springs is always right in the middle of Australia on like every map forever since the beginning of time. So there you go. I thought that was very interesting. So cause I've saved that video to play the app called play, um, to watch later. Haven't yet watched it later. So, so is there an answer? Like, do you spoil it or do you? I think you just need to go watch it in the show notes right now at listen.hemisphericviews/105. Show notes. Show notes are, our show notes are one of the best features of our show. I would agree with that. My favorite, my favorite element of those show notes is how they get cut off in Apple podcasts. I like the mystery that it lends and that Jason lovingly applies a go check it out on the website link. So if you ever have looked at our notes and you've been playing an Apple podcasts and you went, these losers just stopped typing. Why did the bullet list finish? Mid sentence sometimes. Scroll up a bit and you'll find the link. Jason is a dedicated man. That's why I call him the show notes master or master of show notes. It says right at the top, if you're an Apple podcast right now, you're going to want to go to this link instead. Do you want to talk about your two topics? There's two feet in there. I'll get through this quickly because I think Andrew has something that he actually wants to mention. Yeah, I was surprised to see these in the notes because I didn't put them there and yet there are feet emoji next to them. Wait, how could they be there if you didn't put them though? I don't believe. There's absolutely no answer for how that could have happened in a shared note where other people can contribute topics. I don't know how that could possibly happen. Yeah. Anyway, we'll just have to go through and assume that I put them there. Just have to go with it. Yeah. Now, first one says, and I quote next to a yellow foot, let me tell you about my depreciation calculations shortcuts. Yeah, that sounds exciting. Yeah. Let me tell you about how interesting they are. I have spent the last six weeks developing highly intricate shortcut processes in the shortcuts app formerly known as workflow prior to Apple's acquisition of said software. And you know what? I mean, I've been a closet depreciation tracking guy. You know, I haven't been forthright about it. Andrew has been right all along. When I go buying a new product, I want to depress myself entirely into how much it is costing me. So it's actually gotten to the point now, like Andrew, you said you weren't doing groceries. I am doing groceries because you know how sometimes you buy like, let's say a tube of Pringles, right? You buy that tube of Pringles and you go, wow, that's delicious. And you start eating them. Let's push aside the fact that they seem to have been getting smaller over the years. And you go, I'm going to stop now. It says once you pop, you can't stop. But I have stopped for my own sanity and my health. And then you forget it in the pantry. Time goes on. That tube of Pringles is not only going stale and not being eaten, but it's actually depreciating in value. You wouldn't really think of it that way for a snack food in a tube. But here we go. So this is a really complex part of my life that I haven't been honest about. And I just want to finally at myself as a shortcut builder of depreciation tracking, even in the realm of groceries. Well done. Good on you for coming public with that. The student has become the master. And flowing from that, there's a second point there, which apparently I added next to a foot, which is I can't stop eating celery. Yeah. Tell us more. This is something else that I haven't been forthright about. I've always enjoyed celery. It's not the number one food that I reach for. But it did. You know, I have been wrangling with the fact that since I was a kid and I attended the occasional Tupperware party that my parents were invited to, there were unbelievable snack platters put out to seduce you into buying the Tupperware. Right. Yeah. I wasn't there for the Tupperware. I didn't have a disposable income. I was there for the French onion dip. And when the crackers have been exhausted and they're not replenishing the crackers anymore, because let's be honest, they're focusing on the Tupperware sales. Yeah. Not really into the crunchy carrot. When you're a kid, it's like, OK, that's enough carrot. Celery, though, is kind of like nature's natural cheese stringer. It's not as good as cheese, but you want to peel it off. You're pulling down those strands, you know, the things that make xylem and phlegm possible. So I was just crunching on that celery. And to this day, as a grown up, a celery loving adult, I'm still enjoying celery. And ideally with French onion dip. How about Tupperware? Are you still still couldn't give a shit about it? OK, just checking. I wasn't sure if maybe you were doing Tupperware parties at your house now. No. Now, let's take a step back, Jason, as the person who added those topics without any warning, without any time for me to think about what I was going to say. Are you satisfied with what you just heard? That is that is quite the accusation, I will say. Just saying that I would do such a thing. Theoretically, if I had, I think those were satisfactory answers. And thank you. Did you get more than you bargained for? I did. And it was it was it was basically what I was expecting. So I think that that worked out well for for everyone, really. Thank you. Plus, the bonus of Tupperware parties came up, which is nice. That's always a good bonus. I think I went to one as a kid. It was like, why are we here? I am happy to know that that is an international thing that we share, which is Tupperware parties. So that's nice. Type 45? Almost. I've just got a bit of a just got a little bit of Logitech C27 HD webcam follow up. Wow. Can you have... I notice you're not using it. Can you have follow up within the same show? Is that... I'm going to allow it. I'm going to allow it because I think it's going to be funny. Okay. So I probably should have done a little more research before I purchased that. I should have looked at the branding on Logitech. Oh, great. So yeah, so we noticed that we noticed that the zoom was a little tight when we tried that camera. A little tight. Apparently zooming, right, is a feature. Is a feature that you can use quite easily on Windows PCs. On Mac OS with the Logitech camera settings software installed, the pan, tilt and zoom controls of the C270 HD can be modified within that software. However, due to Mac OS limitations, those controls are not functional in third party applications. So you can't download Logi options and do it. I just downloaded the camera control app and I did... No wonder you look so uninterested in what I was saying. Continue. Yeah, I was a little distracted. Yeah, so I'm using the first party. So I was using the first party camera software from Logitech. There is a plus minus button, which I presume is zoom in, zoom out. Clicking said buttons did absolutely nothing. So it looks like if I'm going to use this camera, it's going to be a really tight, really tight on the old noggin. Wow. Unless I plug it into a Windows PC. It's tight. I didn't think it was bad. It's tight, Martin. Yeah, but it's just because you... What if I have a pimple? What's the, what's the Aldi return policy, I guess would be my next question. Yeah, I don't think it would be good. Look at that. That's very tight, Martin. Just move it down slightly and then to your left. There we go. I have one more adjustment suggestion, if I may. I've got to touch up my appearance toggle. Switch back to the other camera. Much better. I like that one. That's better, eh? Okay, that's the iMac one. But this is not going to help me when I go to my M1. God damn it. They got you again. If you hold out your arm, do you have a full arm's length away from the monitor? Yep. Okay, I was going to say if you could push it back a little bit more. Stupid Logitech. Well, I quite enjoyed the angle. I like it, Andrew. Okay, well, thank you. It's much more involving, much more intimate. I feel like I'm being brought into your world. Oh, also, follow up to your follow up. What is the connector on that mouse? Just so we're... On the camera, you mean? Yeah. What do you reckon it is? It's what I fear it is. And you're trying to go to a M1 MacBook Air. So I'm just a little... It's USB-A. Yeah, that's my heart. $29.99, Jason. Yep. Just like my microphone. And you know what? It's never failed me. Well, you have two USB-As though, whereas he has zero. I've got that Thunderbolt 3 dock that has stuff, adapters. Does have stuff, yeah. Here we go again. The never-ending quest. Could you put some sort of wide angle lens on the front of this Logitech camera? Oh my God. Like, remember those old camera phone lenses that you could like kind of stick on your phone? Get one of those. Little clip on one, just do that. Or maybe, Jason, do you reckon you could send my Logitech camera to Sigma and they might fix it up for me? Probably, yeah. I think Logitech is actually just up the road. So I could probably just drop it off. They could probably fix that right up for you. Huh. Here we go. Do a little mount swap. We'll cut off the USB-A, turn it into a USB-C, and we'll swap out the inner mechanism to make it a wide angle. Well, good luck back at Aldi. That's what happens when you stray from Officeworks. What happened? What happened the last time you went to Officeworks? What happened? You were in, you got an SD card, and you were out. That's right. Done. Eight bucks. Next time, next time I'm going to live stream my Aldi shop. If you would have live streamed it, we all would have said, "Do not buy that camera!" It would have been fine. Except none of it would have been recorded because of the stream bug. Top 45. Three, two, one, stop. [Music] (imitates air horn) Hooray!