Latest / Hemispheric Views / 144: Five Years!
Transcript
- Hello, listeners, and welcome to episode one hundred and forty four of Hemispheric Views. Where's Andrew? Where's Jason? It's just Martin here. Well I'm sorry to report that we actually couldn't make our regular recording time work because our calendars were crazy. Andrew's calendar was shifting, Jason had commitments, and guess what? I had to jump on a plane to Melbourne. For work, which is great, it's good fun. But that's why I might sound a bit different because I'm not in my usual recording setup. I'm sitting in a hotel room in Melbourne on a work trip. So, yeah, it just didn't line up. And what's even more hilarious about that, and how haphazard it is, is that this episode actually marks five years of this very podcast. I can't believe I'm saying that. Andrew, Jason and I were like, what, this just crept up on us. We can't believe that it's been five years since in August twenty twenty. we launched our pilot on my Sporadic Solo podcast, Lounge Ruminator, and that pilot was called Zero Zero Zero, if you look at the numbering scheme that we have. International Mac nerds. It really was a pilot. It was a test. I had started off by recommendation of my research supervisors to do podcasting and then hit it off with Andrew and Jason chatting on micro. blog and all this stuff, and then we thought we'd give it a try. And here we are, all this time later. And you know what, we thought, given that it's haphazard, given that it's a bit crazy, given that we changed the format and bits and pieces of themes of this show, Why not make this episode a little bit weird? We don't know if you're going to like it. Maybe not. Sorry, you have to deal with it. So as a bit of a weird, slightly shorter anniversary special to celebrate five years, we've done something a bit different. First of all, in this segment, I just want to say a big thank you to all of you who have been listening. Maybe you've been along for the whole ride, maybe you've been more recent. Maybe you've been on the Discord. Perhaps you've supported us in making the show through our OnePrime Plus membership scheme. However, you've done it, thank you so much because we have a lot of fun doing this show. It can be a bit stressful. We actually haven't missed a fortnight publishing a show in some form in that entire five-year stretch. So it is a commitment. We don't take it lightly. Yes, we are three Privileged white guys talking rubbish on the Internet, but there is some effort involved, and we're very grateful to all of you in your support of our fun project. And of course, that gratitude is extended to our family and friends who work around this fortnightly commitment and listen to us talk because that's time and effort in our collective personal lives as well. So thank you everyone who's been involved and supported the podcast and listened to us babble on for some time. And beyond that, thank you, which I'm saying obviously on behalf of Andrew and Jason as well, there's a bit more to this episode, this little weird anniversary clip show of sorts. First of all, you're going to hear Jason doing a bit of an extended behind-the-scenes rumination of his own about the history of Arcadia June, which this year also celebrated Five years starting off in 2021 through to 2022, 23, 24, 25. And he's going to talk a bit about his thought process on creating the trophies that go to winners. Following that, you're going to hear a bit of a listener corner with some Arcadia tips from two of our award winners this year, following up Eric's little episode Invasion a few episodes ago, which was good fun. And following that You're going to hear two bits that were cut out of earlier episodes. Not because we didn't think that they were good or that they were rubbish, but we try to go for a positive vibe on this show. And sometimes we we drift into the critical or what we think is negative and we think, do we really want to put that in the show? But I thought these two things were worth putting back into the show. One's a turbo media corner on our T V subscriptions. The second is a discussion of OS updates and if we're excited for them. And I think both, although a little bit more critical, are indicative of our changing views or perhaps our maturing ideas on technology and how we've maybe shifted over the last five years. So Maybe if you go back, listen, then come back here, look anywhere in that timeline of our episodes, maybe you'll hear some differences in how we talk and think about technology. So I thought that was good to reinstate in this episode just to see what's changed. And to end that whole process, this anniversary special, you're going to have a little Weird entertaining moment from Andrew at the end, which I hope you'll enjoy. Hello, everyone, out in Hemispheric News Podcast Land. Jason here. I wanted to take a couple of minutes. We'll see how many. To do a little bit of a recap slash walk down memory lane slash behind the scenes of The One, the Only Arcadia June. Everyone knows Arcadia June, or they should. It's been going for five years now. We started back in twenty twenty one, and we just concluded twenty twenty five. And with each Arcadia June, we have winners, but more importantly, we have trophies. That's what the people are here for. So, I wanted to just talk a little bit about what the trophies are from each year, a little bit about maybe how they were made or just how they came to be. And yeah, it thought this might be interesting for folks. So, going all the way back to 2021, and by the way, this is five years ago. So, fortunately, I Have I know someone that happens to have one trophy from every year, and that might be the first place trophy for from every year. So I have a lovely photo of every single trophy together on one table. So thank you for that, Eric. Some may not thank you, but I do because that makes things easier for me to go down. Through the memory. So here we go. Back to 2021. 2021, we started Arcadia June. Didn't think or know that this was going to be. A thing that was going to happen every year. This was a one-off kind of weird idea. Arcadia, the app, was Just one app back then, and we just thought it'd be fun to do a kind of a community event. So it was Arcadia June. It just was June because I think that was the next month. I don't think there was a whole lot of thought put into it. Correct me if I'm wrong, Martin. or Andrew, but I think it was just, hey, let's do this thing. June sounds good. Great, let's do it. So we did Arcadia June twenty twenty one. We had a bunch of people play. It was great. We had winners across two different countries that year. And the trophy that year was looking back now. Maybe not the most creative again. Didn't know this was going to be an ongoing thing, so it was. I went and to a local retro game shop, or just video game store in general. They got, you know, old games too. And I picked uh three Nintendo 64 cartridges that I thought looked cool. Really didn't have anything to do with Arcadia June, but. It was a Nintendo 64 cartridge. Conceivably, if you had a 64, you could play it. So, bonus. And it literally had label tape on it. One side said the show name, and the other side said Arcadia June with the emoji for first, second, or third place. And that was it. That was the trophy for Arcadia June 2021. Plain and simple. N64 cartridge, labels. That's what you got. So. That was the first one. Probably left people just could not wait to get into 2022. But then we so we move we move on from 2021 to 2022. That year, we had, I believe, winners from three countries. So, you know, we're increasing the number of people that are playing. We're spreading out the trophies, which is great. And that year, a little bit by surprise, you know, we're doing it again. So we did a trophy. So we've set a precedent. We've got to do another trophy now. So this year. A little bit of an upgrade, a slight upgrade, I'll say, from the first year. These were Atari game cartridges, actually, from my same local store. This time I tried to get. Atari games that were at least in the spirit of some of the Arcadia games, and then on those was more of a custom Label that I made that said Hemispheric Views presents Arcadia June 2022. It had the Arcadia logo on it and the little first, second, third medal on it. So You know, a game again. This one probably a little harder for people to play since it's an Atari, and I don't venture a lot of people had one, but still a cool little item. Looking back on it. Kind of a misstep in that the label is on one side and then what it is is on the other side. So if you display it with the trophy side forward, if you will. It sort of just looks like a black plastic box. Not super exciting. Then when you turn it over, you go, oh, okay, cool. It's an Atari cartridge. But. If you didn't know what an Atari cartridge was, you'd have no idea. You would just think it was a weird box with a strange opening on top and a thing that says Arcadia June. Still pretty cool, I thought. You know, a slight upgrade from 2021. Still pretty good. So going into 2023. We start to ramp things up a little bit here. So, 2023, we had again more people, more points, everything just continuing to increase here. We had three countries again this year. And this time, a little bit of a tie-in with the first year, but this year was Nintendo 64 controllers With gold, silver, and bronze. So obviously, first, second, third. And then I modified the cables coming out of them. I initially was going to just take the cable off, but that felt. I didn't like it. I wanted it to have the cable too. I thought that was fun. So I actually opened them up, took the cables out, and then cut them in increasing lengths from First place to second place to third place, just as like a little Easter egg there for which place you got. Unless if it wasn't incredibly obvious by the fact that it was gold and silver and so on. And these also then had a little custom tag on them, kind of above the start button on the 64 controller, that said Arcadia June 2023. Again, had the little Similar icons from the year prior. But yeah, a little bit of an upgrade, a little more of a kind of fun object that I thought you could keep on a shelf. So that's the 64 controller for 2023. Then we go into 2024, where things kind of really just go off the rails. 2024, the usual, more points, more people. Um, two country winners this time. So we went from two to three to three back to two. But 20 2024 was I'll describe it as: I had an idea for an arcade style button that would light up and display The place and the information about what the trophy was and so forth. So it grew from a button that didn't do anything. I really wanted the button to light up. Because arcade buttons are supposed to light up, and that's cool and fun. So instead of just a button that clicked, it became kind of an electronics project box. With wiring and batteries and lighting, and a big giant toggle switch from like 1964, just because I really like giant toggle switches. So I put one of those on there. And when it sits on the desk, you can toggle it on to light it up. And then, when you press the button in typical fashion, like an arcade button, when you press it, the light goes out. And when you release it, the light comes back on. Inside the buttons, got a big, um, a big medal for first, second, or third. And the Arcadia logos. By this point, we had the two we had Arcadia and Arcadia Sports. So just like a real weird departure, still game-themed. I always wanted them to be game-themed, but it's it's a Big old arcade button on a big project box. And this was the first year where I was concerned about shipping internationally. With a a box with batteries and wires, and really no way to describe what the hell it was. But everything worked out and it got through got through customs just fine and got to everybody that needed to get to. And as far as I know, they all worked when they got there. So that was great. So that was year, what was that? That was 2024, which brings us to 2025 this year. So we just finished. It's August something or other as I'm recording this. And I wanted to come up with a new idea. So, this was probably the first year where I started planning a little bit early. Generally, Spoiler, these sort of get the idea concept happens, the creation happens. Pretty much after June ends. So there's kind of a joke of Arcadia June Arcadia July trophies and then Arcadia August deliveries, which is exactly what happened this year. And this year, I went through a couple design things that I wanted to do and ended up on one that I was hoping everybody would understand what it was. For better or worse, I really fell in love with the idea, so I'm making it. So that's what we went with. And what it was was a or is a foosball table handle/slash pole/slash little Player. So if you've played Foozbowl, which I imagine everybody has, or at least seen one, there's a big long pole that's on the table with a handle on one side and kind of a Rubber stopper on the other end, and then you have a series of the little foosball players attached to the pole. You twist the pole, and then they kick the ball. So, I wanted like a little portable version of that for each person. So, I got the materials for it. So, I have the pole there. I've got the little foosball player person. I have a foosball handle. And those are all put together. And I'll put a picture. Well, yeah, I'll put a picture so you can see everything, but what I did was I took each of the little foosball players. Oh, I'm bearing the lead here. This was the first year. Sorry, tangent. First year, we had more than three people as winners. Generally, we've had first, second, third for all the years. This year, we had a three-way tie. For third place. And I couldn't, I didn't want to do like a tiebreaker that felt kind of lame. And it was just like a whole everybody already played, and kind of, you know, and then it was like, hey, do more. So instead, I just said, forget it. Let's just build three third-place trophies so everybody can get one. So we've got first place, the little foosball person is. I did a paint job for all three. So I did a A gold for first place. I did a silver for second place. And then I did three, you know, all three of the third place ones are the same, but a nice bronze for the third place little foosball person. And then on the handles, those are all black. Those are all exactly the same. But on each handle, there is a metal plate that is attached with two Hex bolts and stamped into those it says Arcadia June 2025. And the first place one has a gold one that matches the little player and then the second place has a silver that matches the little player. And of course The third place one has a little bronze one that matches the player. So just kind of a little weird, quirky item that purposefully doesn't really Stand up or fit anywhere particularly well. And that was by design. I wanted it to be an odd item that if you're going to display it, people were going to ask, What the hell is that thing on your table? So hopefully mission accomplished there. So that's that's the twenty twenty five one, which I really I think it's I don't really have a, you know, I can't, it's hard to pick favorites, but I think it might be my favorite one just because it feels It just feels really good, and you can kind of hold it, and it's strange, and it's an odd object that's still related to games, but nothing to do with it. I don't know. I just really like it. I think collectively, I like them all for their own reasons. But yeah, that's 2021 through 2025. A little look at how the thought process went for all the trophies and what they are and what they ended up being. I don't have a ton of, you know, drawings or iterations that I can share. A lot of this just It happens in my head. I come up with something. I go find pieces and parts. I build something and then hope that I can make it reproducible at least three times. Looking back, if I would have changed anything, it would have been to make one additional version for myself. But I didn't really feel like I needed one. So for better or worse, the only ones that exist are the ones that people have. I kind of appreciate that. So there you go. That's the little look back on Arcadia 2021 through 2025. And we'll see you all 2026 for something new and/or different, and/or More exciting than we've ever done in the past. I'm excited about it. It's going to be different. We're going to do something different. We don't know what it is yet, but we'll let you know. Thanks, everybody. Hi, Thomas Furians. This is for. Stolery, stolery, and just giving a quick voicemail to say thank you so much for running this every year, and yeah, looking forward to receiving my trophy. Tips on scores. So I don't know if you saw the lead board, but I I s scored all my points predominantly on the pool games, so nine ball and pool. And yeah, if you want to get beat me in those scores, it's literally you need to score off the break and not make any mistakes. You need a perfect round. You do that, you'll be good. Um, yeah, here's the next year. Hi, everyone, it's Tashken here with some hot tips for playing Arcadia. My first tip would be to try and play across different platforms. So I originally played Brico on the phone only. And then I discovered it on Apple Watch, and that's where I actually got my ridiculously high scores. And that's because the games are structured a little bit differently. It's actually much harder to play on the phone than it is on the watch, and that's why I'm able to get such high scores. So in Brico on the phone there are six colored bricks, and on the watch there are only five. So that makes it easier to find matches and complete them and get the score. The other thing on the phone is that there's a a brick wall that moves up your screen, which is nonexistent when you play on the watch. So that also makes it heaps easier to play. And yeah, that's my hot tip. Play across platforms. Play phone, watch, Apple T V iPad, Mac, some of them are really hard, some of them really easy, but you got to try it. And see you next year for Arcadia June Now, I've got a Turbo Media Corner prompt for both of you. Turbo. Yeah. Now, very quickly, it's pretty simple. I don't pay for any streaming services anymore. Whoa. They're gone. Whoa. Right? None. And there are things like Apple T V Plus and Disney Plus where it's like, oh, maybe I'll go back for a little bit of that show or something, but as of last week. I don't have any like paid streaming apps on the Apple TV. It's basically just Australian free-to-air stuff and the stuff that I have on the TV app that I've purchased or might rent. What is your current situation, both of you? Do you have lots of streaming services happening? I was thinking maybe we'd do a bit of a check of what the status is. Is this fatiguing for you? Do you still have stuff? What's going on? I think Jason's doing a zero. With his hands? Jason's holding up a big zero with his hands, or he's doing some sort of salute to the sun. I'm not sure. Zero. Zero. None. None. Until Severance comes back or Silo comes back. Yep, same. And even then, I might wait for them to appear somewhere. 'Cause I'm guessing you just don't need it, like it's an unnecessary expense. It is wildly overpriced. It seems like they raise the price on all of them like every month for what benefit? I don't know. It seems like there's less stuff on it. So there's more charge. And it's just, it's just bad. The experience of using them is bad. The biggest reason to have them is they want you to feel like you're missing out on something. So you just have to have it just in case. And turns out cancel them all and you don't even notice. It's fine. So bet down to none. It slowly went. I think Apple TV was the last one. But now that severance is over, like, don't need it, don't care. So, zero. It just go back when the thing returns. That's right. Yeah. How about you, Andrew? Well, I'm in a bit of a different scenario because I've got A shared household with kids and all that that want different things. But so Netflix kind of not for my purposes, but because I could live without it, but it is. active here for others. And we just renewed Disney because there's a kid that wants to rewatch the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies. It's a project to go back from the beginning of them and watch them all. So that's a lot of hours. That's what I've said. I've put the warning out. I've said, are you sure you want to do this? Like, this is a big commitment, but teenagers will do their thing, right? And teenagers have time. That is the one blessing that they have at that age: they have plenty of time. Good for them. So we've got the Disney just come back. Apart from that, Apple TV, but I have news here. Just yesterday I went through and canceled my Apple One package. Good for you. Same. Because so I'm going to lose Apple T V, I'm going to lose Apple Music, I'm going to lose Arcade. Oh, no Oh, I know. Oh, God. What are you going to do? I know. What are you going to do? You're not going to be able to play all the plus games from 12 years ago? How are you going to manage? But annoyingly, I am still now going to have to. 'Cause I was already buying like this two hundred gigabytes of extra iCloud storage 'cause my mid tier Apple I package wasn't enough. So now I'm going to have to buy the big boy storage and still pay Apple fifteen dollars. But at least you're using it. See, this is what I was going to say. So Jason and I might have left streaming services for different but similar reasons. It's whether you're using it or not or getting value from it. You're paying for it because you're getting value from it. It's being used. Whereas I think the worst case scenario is when you feel obliged to stay and pay for something because of the FOMO that Jason was describing, and then you don't actually watch anything. It's like when you just watch TV in the old days, quote unquote, like broadcast TV. If a show didn't interest you anymore, you stopped watching. You didn't feel guilty, you just moved on. But this money, this subscription keeps you there. So if you're using it, It's not a waste of money. One thing I'm nervous about is giving up Apple Music. What's going to happen with all the home pods that are scattered around? Are they going to become just Is it no, it's fine. They're they're just high quality speakers that become airplay machines. Okay. That's it. So personally I've never cared about walking up and requesting stuff a lot. I do use my voice with it, but really that's to request things like internet radio stations that we happen to play. Otherwise, you don't need it. It will just say, Oh, sorry, you need an Apple Music subscription. Solution? Beam it from your phone. Okay. There is a problem. I have to slightly correct Martin here. What's that? By streaming what you want to play, it's going to actually play the correct thing. I know it's a burden that it's going to play what you want it to play, but it's something you're going to have to deal with. And accept it. But other than that, yeah, it's fine. Yeah, seriously, it's the correct thing is very refreshing. And knowing that, oh, I just did that from my phone and it worked instantly rather than working on it No, don't do that. I can see there's a robot in the notes with iOS 39. Huh? Yeah, are you guys uh are you guys using that yet? Is that that's the new one, right? Thirty nine? Thirty-nine, yeah. Is the year I think that's twenty thirty nine or nineteen thirty nine? Is that Are you going with the year numbers? Isn't that the sorry, twenty six. It's twenty six. Is that the new one? iOS twenty six? Yeah. Apparently. I am loving this new operating system on my phone. I don't know if either of you are using it or not. Sorry, I'm confused because didn't you is this sarcasm now? Because didn't you move away from the iPhone? Oh Sorry, my bad. It's actually Android 16 that I'm loving, not iOS 26. My mistake. My mistake. I was wondering why I was loving it so much. Anyway. iOS 26 is apparently coming out, so get ready for that. Next topic. I'm actually not excited about iOS 26. I'm excited about macOS 26. Oh, if either of you have words, go for it. I could not. There's zero cares that I have for any of the OS's twenty six. But feel free to chat about it amongst yourselves. Thank you, Jason. We'll do that on the podcast. We'll keep chatting. I almost want to try Android now because, yeah, iOS seems to be going to weird places. But I've got the whole integration. You know, I'm bought into the ecosystem. And I can't be bothered leaving it. Well, I'd just say, you know, at the risk of repeating myself, I'll say it briefly. I love the Mac, right? And unless they do something to really kill it or ruin it, I'll keep loving that. And that's where my enthusiasm and fandom is. I'm happy with the other devices in my life, like iPhones and iPads, but as they've become increasingly entrenched in daily existence and tools that you really can't live without with their own annoyances and issues. I don't feel the love for them like I do with the Mac as a versatile creative tool. So I don't follow the OS stuff as enthusiastically as I used to. The Mac stuff, sure, if something cool happens there, I'm interested. Yeah, it's Martin, it's not a versatile tool. It's a versus a tile. Versus a tile. Yes. Versus a tile. Yep. Good. Thank you for turning that up. I'll pull you up on that one. I actually don't know anything about the new macOS. I only have seen smatterings of the other ones, but I don't have any of those devices, so I don't really follow it either. And that's the kind of hard hitting Apple fan news that listeners can expect on Hemispheric View. I think they call that a deep dive. A deep dive. That's a deep dive right there. We circled back. We went to the parking lot. What else did we do? We double-clicked. We uh yeah, we did all those annoying words uh to come up with. Um kind of who cares? We'll see what it's like when it comes out. Well, I'm sure the listeners have gained some learnings at the appropriate cadence. Definitely. Don't know let's let your dog don't let your daughter don't let Martin has asked me to record something for this special five year celebration of hemispheric views. Five years That is a long time It's hard to believe. But it really has been. I didn't know what to do for five years. Um, sing happy birthday. Eh, that's probably not cool. But singing That is cool. And you all know that I love singing. I know that you will love hearing me sing. I'm terrible at it, but it seems to be a thing over the five years of hemispheric views that has persisted. So let me see what I can do here. Now, here we go. It's been five years since we hit record Three hosts together, Hemispherics explored Tech and life and a dash of fun From keyboards clicking to a podcast run Voices bouncing 'cross' the great divide, North to south, were globally in stride. Every fortnight the banter flows From work flows, work flows, down to our woes Five years of laughs, five years of views Hemispheric chatter that we can all can use East meets West and your podcast crew Here's to five more years with the whole down crew Now that was supposed to be to the theme of One Week by Bare Naked Ladies. I didn't think I even got close, but the lyrics, I didn't even come up with them. It was Chat GPT. That's pretty much how lazy I've become. But there you go, five years. And that's it. Happy Hemisphere.