Latest / North Meets South Web Podcast / Soccer terror, conference swag, and Omarchy (btw)

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Soccer terror, conference swag, and Omarchy (btw) · North Meets South Web Podcast

• 0:00
  -Hi. I'm Michael Dyrynda. -And I am Jake Bennett with a mystery
• 0:04
  device.
• 0:06
  And welcome to episode 181 of the North Meet South Web Podcast.
• 0:14
  Did the music play? I didn't hear it. I'm sure it'll be in the recording.
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  -It'll be fine. -It'll be fine. Hey, I have a mystery
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  device in my hands right here.
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  -It could be- -Who knows where it is?
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  -It could be muted. -It'll be in the recording.
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  -If- -It'll be around.
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  It'll be in the recording. If if you are watching the YouTubes,
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  I would be curious if you can guess what this is.
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  -So take a look. Michael, any ideas? -Well, yeah. I looked at that, and I
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  thought, is it, like, a
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  a temperature probe? And then I thought maybe it's a timer, but it looks like, uh,
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  that little half circle thing would... Do we call it a compass? Was it a compass?
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  -Um... -It's not a compass.
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  -Protractor. Protractor. Is that the word? -Oh, close, sort of. Like-
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  I don't know. You're the math teacher. You you tell me.
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  It's it is a digital angle finder.
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  -So it is, um... -Yeah. So it's a protractor.
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  What you do is
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  yeah. Sure. Sure. What you do is it's magnetic. I am doing baseboards in my
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  -basement again. -Right.
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  Not again. I'm doing baseboards again in my base yes. Now I'm doing it in my
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  basement. Um, and, uh, and so what I needed is, I I realized that when I'm
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  cutting the 45s on my baseboards, they're not lining up correctly. Like, they just
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  don't like, the the angle is is off a little bit on my saw. I've had it for-
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  -So they're 45 ish. -I've had it for yes. Exactly. I've had it
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  for years. Right? And so in all the times I've moved it, I'm sure some screw got
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  knocked loose, whatever. So Mhmm. It's not exactly it's not what what it is is the
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  blade is not exactly at a 90 degree angle with the with the actual table, right, of
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  the of the saw. And so, um, I've tried to sort of level it up, like, with, like,
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  just, like, a a square, like, a speed square to, like, put that on the table and
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  then, like, put that on the saw. It doesn't work very well. So I I I have to I
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  figured out, like, how do you do this, and people suggest these. So you put this
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  on the thing, and you zero it out. And so, like, you put this on the table, you zero
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  it out, and then you put it on the blade, and you make sure that it's at 90
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  degrees. And if it isn't at 90 degrees, you adjust it until it is at 90 degrees
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  precisely, and then you're good to go. Now it's funny because it's, like, something
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  you only probably have to do once, and the tool is, like, 30 bucks. So I use it one
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  time, but it's, like, it saves me so much time. It's, like, kinda worth it because
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  now I can make sure that the angles are correct. Anyway, I went out and got this
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  about 15 minutes ago. So
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  -I see. -Now I have it. If anybody needs to borrow
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  -one -And now you're gonna be running a table
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  saw at, uh, 10 o'clock at night. Is that right?
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  Well, I you know, I'm probably gonna leave that for tomorrow. My kids are sleeping
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  now, so I don't I don't wanna, you know, don't wanna wake them up. But, uh, anyway,
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  yes, I have it now. I'm excited about it. Michael, we've got so much stuff we could
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  talk about. Um, I threw you a a list of things that I could talk about, but I
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  don't know. Let's talk about let's talk about you first, shall we? What's what's
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  going on in in your life, in your big world?
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  Uh, well, uh,
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  over the the last two weeks since we last spoke, I have discovered that
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  Eli, my 7 year old, is
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  something... He's developing into, like, this soccer terrorist
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  and in the best possible way. Right? In the best possible way. He... In the last
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  two weeks, he's just, like, all of a sudden become very aggressive in attack.
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  -Love that. -Before he before he kind of sat back and
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  he watched the play developed, and he was quite content with being a defender. But
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  he has whatever whatever it is, the switch is flicked where he has decided now that
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  he just wants to attack, and he wants to be involved in the play, and he wants to
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  be
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  in the forward. So I sent some videos to the cash money over the past 3.
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  -I saw it. Yeah. -So he's kicked 3 goals in the last 2
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  -weeks. -That's awesome.
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  He he, um, he
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  -nailed this poor goalie two weeks ago. -Oh, no.
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  Like, absolutely squared him up in the, uh, the nether regions and the poor, poor
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  child probably saw God briefly, um,
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  -in that moment. So -Oh, lord.
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  I I look. I I, you know, he
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  very sportsmanlike after the game. I sent him over to make sure that, like, the
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  -child is okay. -Yeah. Of course. Yeah. Of course. Right.
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  Because, like, you're not gonna stop and apologize mid game. These things happen.
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  Um, you know, there's no malice in it, especially at that age where they don't
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  really have the control. It's kind of see ball, get ball. I wanna kick goals.
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  -Yeah. Yeah. -I wanna kick it as hard as I can. So
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  -Totally. Yeah. -You know, make sure that this child did
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  -not wanna speak to Eli whatsoever. -No way.
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  Which understandably he should not. He was yeah. So
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  -Oh, man. That's funny. -But, um, yeah. It's just fun watching him
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  develop and the speed that he has with the ball and the control. Just to, like, take
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  control of the ball at the halfway line, break past three defenders, and streak
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  into a one on one with the goalie is just... And this is and this was, like
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  -Proud dad moment. -This weekend against yeah. It was
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  this was against the team that the last time they played, Eli's team lost 4:1.
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  -Oh, wow. Yeah. -And this time they managed to walk away.
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  He was the only goal scorer and so they won 1:0, but he was he was pretty happy
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  about that. And which was a good recovery because he got, like, kicked in the in the
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  ankle in the first half, um, by accident. And so to to get up and and come back in
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  the second half and and kick the only goal of the match was just
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  it's, um... I was talking to a a friend earlier, and I said to them
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  I had never envisaged myself as being a soccer dad. Like, I think I've spoken on
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  the podcast before that I've never never been involved in soccer, never had any
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  personal interest in it, never watched it, you know, don't understand any of the
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  rules. But to see him have such a,
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  um, a passion for it, and he's always talking about players, and he's asking,
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  like, "Who's the best player?" I'm like, "Man, I don't even know half the names
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  that you're throwing out at me." Fortunately, it's like Messi, Ronaldo, or
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  Mbappe. And so he's he's a big Mbappe fan at the moment. But, uhHe's just, yeah,
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  it's- it's- it's really cool as a, as a dad to see that, like, he has picked, like
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  -he's picked something- -Yeah. Yeah
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  -...completely uninfluenced by me. -How- how old is he now? Is he eight?
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  -He's seven. He's seven. -Seven? Okay.
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  Yeah. So, you know, obviously with me having nothing to do with soccer ever, for
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  him to, to be completely uninfluenced by me to f- find something that he's
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  passionate about. And, like, at school it, th- they're very much either basketball
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  or soccer at, at his school. And so he's picked soccer because that's the first
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  sport that he has access to, um, at school. Basketball doesn't start until
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  second grade. So, yeah, the fact that he's just picked that up and he's running with
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  -it is, is really cool as a dad to see. -That is. It is, it's neat as, like, you
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  watch your kids become their own little people.
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  -Mm-hmm. -Like you said specifically, like, when
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  there's a decision that they've made that was not prompted by or directed by you,
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  -that's just so cool. -Yeah.
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  And I remember for Graham, it was probably around that age, he started getting
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  really interested in basketball. It was probably... Actually, I- I take that back.
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  It was probably a little bit later than that. I- I'm sure it was later than that.
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  But
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  when he started, like, watching NBA Highlights and things like that, you know,
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  -and he would know- -Yeah
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  ...all the names and he would know who played last night and the scores, and he
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  knew all that stuff. And it's just like, I don't know-
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  -Yeah -...any of that stuff. And it is-
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  -Yeah -...just so cool. Um, so cool to see kids
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  -kind of, you know, developing their own- -Into their own
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  ...little worlds. Yeah, yeah, it's so cool. Uh, at that age, it's funny with
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  soccer, like, aggression, uh, makes up for so much skill. Like-
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  -Mm-hmm. -Just, not that it's not-
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  -If he could just get there first. -Not to say... Correct. Not to say that,
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  like, he's not skilled. That's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying-
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  -Yeah -...the kids that are the most aggressive
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  are often gonna be the ones who are gonna, you know, gonna have the ball-
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  -Yeah -...and who are gonna make the goals. And
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  so that's- that's awesome. And as he, as he kind of, you know, continues to grow,
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  I'm sure he'll- he'll be really, really good. But, you know, at this age, you're
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  right, it is just about kind of getting in there and getting at the ball and
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  putting a foot on the ball. The goalie is not, you know, if you can get the ball
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  anywhere, uh, other than exactly where the goalie's at, there's a good chance it's
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  -going in. And so- -Yeah
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  ...that's- that's super fun though, and it's just great for their confidence.
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  Like, "I'm good at something. I found something I like."
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  -Yeah. -Like-
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  -Yeah -...that's so cool. So good for him, man.
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  -That's awesome. That's exciting. -Yeah. Yeah, he's a .... My- my brother
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  came over on a, on the weekend and Eli's like, "Can we kick the ball around?" I'm
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  like, "No worries." Anyway, my poor brother ended up on the ground twice
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  -because he got kicked in the- -Ha
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  ...in the neathers, so.
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  -Oh, that's hilarious. I am- -You need to go home.
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  I'm gonna use, I'm gonna use the word loosely here. I'm coaching Harrison's
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  -soccer team right now, um- -Uh-huh. Uh-huh
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  ...you know, which means basically show up and hand out snacks. Um-
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  -Mm-hmm. -But, uh, I had an opportunity to do so
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  this last week. I- I was subbing. I was, uh, I've- I've been kind of helped with
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  crowd control a couple times, and then this last Saturday-
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  -Yeah -...the- the coach was out, so I got to
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  -coach. Um- -Mm-hmm.
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  But, uh, Harrison has got a good leg and so I put him on the corner kick twice. And
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  I told him, I said, "Just kick it as hard as you can into the middle. Just kick it
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  as hard as you can." And some unfortunate kid, two different kids at two different
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  times, stepped in front of him. I'm like... And they got it right in the face
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  -twice, two kids. I'm like, "Dude-" -Yeah.
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  "...I felt terrible." But it's like, you're gonna stand right in front of the
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  -ball. -Yeah.
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  Like, I don't know what to tell you. Like, he's gonna kick the ball-
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  Eli is... Eli is definitely very much a stickler for the rules, so he's-
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  -Oh, okay. Okay -...been hit in the face a couple of times
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  because he refuses to put his hands up to protect his face. And I said-
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  -Oh, yeah -..."Look, I get it. I get that that would
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  be a- a- a penalty and it would be a handball, but do you wanna give away the
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  penalty or do you wanna get hit in the face with a ball? These are your options."
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  That's hilarious.
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  I said, "You could just duck. Like, get out of the way. Don't stand there and
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  -watch the ball hit you." -Nope. He's too hardcore. He's too
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  -hardcore. He's like his dad. -Because the amount of times, like, we- we
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  went to the- the pitch where they- they play to have a kick around a while ago,
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  -and I kicked- -I'm listening. I'm gonna go grab a soda
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  -while you talk. I'll be right back. -All right. I kicked from the halfway line
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  at goal, and he was in the goal. And I watched this ball sail for, you know,
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  three seconds in the air on a full-sized pitch towards him. And I'm like, "He'll
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  catch that. He'll catch that. He's gonna get out of the way. He'll totally..." And
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  then he got hit right in the stomach, and then he had a, he had it, he had the gall
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  to have a crack at me because I kicked the ball at his stomach. I'm like, "Mate, you
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  had an eternity to do literally anything
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  to get out of that ball's way, and you chose instead
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  -to get hit in the stomach." -Oh, that's hilarious.
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  -So I- I don't know what to do for you. -Oh, that's so funny.
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  -But, um, he's definitely getting- -I love it, man. You should-
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  -...more resilient to the- -Yeah
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  ...the knocks and the bumps and the hits of- of the sport. I said, "It's- it's
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  gonna happen in the sport. People are gonna run into you. You're gonna, you're
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  -gonna..." Especially at this age- -Good for him. Yeah, that's good for him
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  ...you're gonna not be looking where you're going and you're gonna bump heads
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  -and things like that. -Yep.
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  And it's, you know, you gotta persist with it.
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  -Get tough. -And you will just learn to get awareness
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  -for the game over time. -Yep. Yep. No, that's awesome, man. That's
• 11:00
  super fun. Yeah, it's, uh, it's about that time of year for you guys. And for us,
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  it's, like, perfect sports season, you know? It's like-
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  -Mm-hmm. -It's, uh, the weather's just the right
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  -temperature. It's not super hot- -Just turning
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  -...it's not super cold yet. -Yeah.
• 11:12
  Yeah, exactly. It's just that perfect time of year for these sort of sports. So
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  -it's- it's really fun. -And even just standing there, like, you
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  know, 18 degrees Celsius on the weekend and it was, like, warm just standing
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  -there. -Yeah.
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  But the days are getting longer. It's supposed to rain for the rest of this
• 11:24
  week, but the sun is beaming down at the moment, so-
• 11:27
  -Jealous -...it's- it's certainly getting closer.
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  Which- which makes me panic a little bit, because it makes me realize that as it
• 11:32
  gets warmer, it means we're getting closer to Larak on AU, which makes me think,
• 11:36
  "Well, there's probably some things that we should be getting underway now." So
• 11:39
  we're gonna put the schedule out for that soon as well to transition to another
• 11:43
  topic, I suppose. We'll put the, um... Which we've done in- in the past. We- we
• 11:48
  announce all of the speakers, and then once the speakers are announced, we then
• 11:51
  put the, all the talk titles up on the schedule.
• 11:53
  -Yep, yep. -So that everyone knows, like, "Okay, well,
• 11:55
  if you've been on the fence about coming for whatever reason, now you can see what
• 11:58
  all of the topics are gonna be this year." And then we'll start putting out the
• 12:01
  speaker intro videos, which I've been editing. Um, you know, I said to the
• 12:05
  speakers, "I want this all by the end of July," and- and I've got seven, I think,
• 12:09
  out of 18
• 12:11
  speakers' intro videos. So, you know, chasing them is like herding cats
• 12:15
  -sometimes. -Yeah. Yeah.
• 12:17
  ... people, people have lives to get to. So it's just a gentle reminder. And it's
• 12:20
  not like I'm hassling them every day for the last, you know, 26 days. It's like,
• 12:25
  -"Hey, by the way, I would like-" -Yeah. It's like when you get a chance.
• 12:29
  -Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. -"... would you mind publishing these
• 12:29
  videos?" And it's, like, one a day, three times a week so, you know, we've got-
• 12:33
  -Sure -... a little bit of time up our sleeve
• 12:34
  with, with what I've got. But, um, yeah. We'll get those out soon. So get, you
• 12:39
  know, people will get a chance to, to meet the speakers. We're doing Road to Laricon
• 12:42
  -again. -I love that. I always think that's so fun.
• 12:44
  -Yeah. -Yeah. Doing, um,
• 12:47
  Road to Laricon again, so we'll do the, the, you know, 10-minute short form music
• 12:52
  podcast with the speakers where we talk to them about that kinda stuff. So I'm
• 12:56
  recording those at the moment and getting them ready, and we'll, we'll put those out
• 13:01
  sort of in October as a, as a lead-up to the conference. So, like, here's the
• 13:05
  playlist, you can listen to it on the plane if you want, or you can listen to
• 13:07
  the podcast on your flights into, into Brisbane. So that's happening. We're,
• 13:12
  we're getting into the, the thick of it now in terms of putting in our orders for
• 13:17
  merch and all of that kinda stuff, so. And we're starting to ramp up some of our
• 13:21
  marketing stuff, so those of you who
• 13:25
  have... I, I think people are kind of overtly aware, like they've seen it around
• 13:29
  the place but they haven't thought much about it. I was talking to Ashley Hindle
• 13:33
  yesterday about some Boost stuff, and we were talking about, you know, how, um,
• 13:38
  trying to get GPT to generate images can sometimes be a bit hit-and-miss. Like, I
• 13:44
  gave it a photo of me and a photo of someone else, and we wanted to, um,
• 13:49
  create, like, a cartoon version of it. And so, you know, the first version was,
• 13:53
  like, close but it gave me purple eyebrows. I'm like, okay-
• 13:56
  -Oh, fair enough. Okay -... oh, and then, like, a full, full
• 13:58
  -beard. -Nice.
• 13:59
  And I was like, okay, I can't grow facial hair so let's dial that back to stubble,
• 14:03
  you know, this, this patch- patchwork quilt I've got on my face, and make my
• 14:07
  eyebrows closer to the color of my beard. Like, it got the, it got the beard color
• 14:12
  right, i- but eyebrows... So, okay, no worries. So it did that, and then it,
• 14:16
  like, completely removed the facial hair, but it got the eyebrows right. I said,
• 14:20
  "Okay, cool. The eyebrows are right. Now let's bring the stubble back." And it went
• 14:23
  back to a full beard. And so it's just , you know, theoretically, it's supposed to
• 14:27
  have the context to be able to do this, and then... Okay, let's fix that. So it
• 14:32
  fixed the beard and it fixed the eyebrows, but then it completely changed the style
• 14:35
  -of the image. -Oh.
• 14:36
  It went from, like, a cartoon illustration to, like, this neon vogue, like, bright
• 14:40
  pinks and blacks and s- I'm like, no, let's go back, and then, then it changed
• 14:44
  my hair. I was like, no, don't do that with the hair, like, let's get back there.
• 14:47
  And eventually, you know, uh, three rainforests and a couple of, uh, species
• 14:53
  later, all, all wiped ou- out of existence, uh, we finally got, like, a
• 14:57
  passable image, so.
• 14:59
  -And that's why- -But, uh, you know, Ashley, Ashley said-
• 15:01
  ... sometimes it's easiest to hire somebody off Fiverr, but-
• 15:02
  Right. Yeah, that's right. So Ashley's like, you know, it's, um, it's, it's
• 15:07
  interesting. Like, some people can do really good work with it, and other times
• 15:10
  it's, like, really hit-and-miss. And I said, you know, yeah, just like, like
• 15:14
  -Bruce, he's got his own social media now- -Oh, yeah
• 15:16
  ... he's having a great time, like, and he's like, "Yeah, people at, um, Laravel
• 15:20
  Live Denmark were talking about it, but I hadn't, hadn't seen it yet." So he's,
• 15:23
  like, definitely present. We're gonna use him to do, um, some of our sponsor
• 15:29
  promotion in the coming weeks as well, so he'll be, like, sending out his own little
• 15:33
  social media videos. This is all being managed by Nuclear, so it's-
• 15:36
  -Love that -... it's a lot of fun for me as well as,
• 15:39
  as, like, an observer of it happening, because whilst I'm sort of aware
• 15:44
  of, you know, the content that is in the pipe and the stuff that... Like, I don't
• 15:48
  see the videos or the images that get generated ahead of time. So it's always
• 15:53
  fun when I see Bruce pop up in the timeline as a, as a, as his own little-
• 15:58
  -That is- -... entity there.
• 15:58
  It's like a fun little surprise. Yeah. Absolutely.
• 16:01
  -Yeah, it's like, "Ooh. Oh, that's right." -That's pretty cool.
• 16:01
  -Today he's posting. -Since you're not the one directly managing
• 16:03
  it, yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that. Yeah, they look good. The videos look really
• 16:06
  good. I started following them when we were at Laracon US together, and it's-
• 16:10
  -Yeah -... really well done. Really, really good
• 16:11
  -stuff, so. -Yeah, there's-
• 16:13
  -Um- -... there's a few, like, combinations of
• 16:14
  things going on there, they're, you know, combining image generation with video
• 16:19
  generation with, like, you know, really finely tuning the, the prompts and things
• 16:22
  like that. So we've got that going out, we've got other stuff going out. Tickets
• 16:26
  are, tickets are moving along as well. We're, um, the quiz night is almost at
• 16:31
  capacity, which is really exciting, 'cause it was, you know-
• 16:33
  -What's that? What is that? -So, like, Mostly Technical had the, the
• 16:38
  -day zero party before Laracon US. We- -Yeah.
• 16:40
  Last year, we just did, like, we organized a space at a pub and we were like, "You
• 16:44
  know, if you wanna meet up, they've got food and drink specials, you can kind of
• 16:47
  just meet up there." And we had probably about 70 or 80 people filter in through
• 16:52
  the afternoon and the evening for that. So we thought this year, we would try and
• 16:56
  structure it a little bit more than just, like, turn up at the pub. It's now, you
• 17:02
  know, for attend- It's, it's free for attendees to go, um, but they need to get
• 17:06
  a ticket because we've got limited space in the venue.
• 17:07
  -Yeah. -So we're, we're hiring in, like, a proper
• 17:11
  quizmaster that's gonna come in and, and do all the questions. There'll be AV,
• 17:15
  there'll be some prizes, there'll be, you know, the food and drink specials will be
• 17:18
  there as well. So people will have the opportunity to, like, reconnect with
• 17:22
  friends, or if you, if you're coming for the first time, you'll be able to put
• 17:25
  together a team on the night. And, um, yeah. Just, just something to do that's,
• 17:31
  like, you know, people will start coming in the night before the conference, or the
• 17:34
  afternoon before the conference, so if they get there in time, just something to
• 17:38
  do. So
• 17:39
  -yeah, I'm keen to- -Are they technical questions?
• 17:42
  -See how it plays out this year. -Like, technical quiz stuff, or?
• 17:45
  No, no, it's not, like, not a Laravel thing, it'd be like a general knowledge-
• 17:47
  -Pop culture? -... we're gonna-
• 17:48
  -Yeah, okay. -Yeah, pop culture, we'll throw some, like,
• 17:50
  '90s stuff in there, 'cause we're, we're deep in the '90s for, for this year's
• 17:54
  event. And, um, yeah, looking, looking forward to how that plays out. We've,
• 17:58
  we've got some cool prizes in the pipe as well, though. My initial thought was let's
• 18:03
  get movie vouchers, but if you have people coming from overseas, it's hard to
• 18:06
  -give them a movie voucher- -Yeah, yeah, that's gonna be tough
• 18:07
  -... that they're not gonna use. -Yeah.
• 18:08
  -So it's like, okay, we need to- -Exactly
• 18:09
  -... come up with something. -You could get, like, a VHS of, like, a
• 18:13
  '90s movie and give that away, that'd be funny. Like, or if you had, like, a, a
• 18:16
  Sony Walkman with, like, a tape deck. Like, an actual tape?
• 18:20
  -Mm-hmm. -You know what I mean? Like-
• 18:20
  -Yeah. -Like, I had a guy that I know, he brought
• 18:22
  -in- -Mini disc players.
• 18:24
  Yeah, right. When he brought in, he brought in a Sonny Walkman with like a
• 18:28
  tape, a tape player. You know what I mean? Um, just the other day. He had two of
• 18:32
  them. I think he found them at like Goodwill or whatever.
• 18:34
  -Mm-hmm. -And, um, he's this dude I go to church
• 18:37
  with. He's, he's deaf and he's, like, always just on the hunt for something
• 18:40
  funny. He's just a really
• 18:42
  -unique guy, but he brings in the- -Yeah
• 18:44
  ... the most crazy stuff, and always wants to show me this stuff. And so yeah. It's
• 18:48
  a couple different Sony Walkmans, and I was like, those are actually really cool.
• 18:51
  Like, if somebody had that as like a give wa- With, like, a tape of, like, a popular
• 18:55
  artist from that time, I would totally listen to that, take that home. That'd be
• 18:59
  super cool. Just kinda put it on your shelf of like, "Oh yeah, this is pretty
• 19:02
  -neat." Um... -Yeah, it's off the... I can't, I can't
• 19:05
  really see it. I've got the, the mis- the shelf of miscellany up here.
• 19:09
  -Yeah, yeah. -Which has got, like, my PHP Lambos up
• 19:13
  there. I've got, like, a singing cactus. I've got, I've got, uh...
• 19:17
  -Yeah. The PHP Elephants maybe? -This is fine dining all this kind of stuff
• 19:19
  up there. Yeah, the PHP Elephants are up on this side.
• 19:22
  -Yeah. -We, we can't actually see. Um, because-
• 19:24
  -Yeah -... I'm, I'm on to a second layer of PHP
• 19:26
  -Elephants. -I love that. I think I've got, like,
• 19:29
  seven or eight now, I think. So that's kinda fun. Um, speaking of cool technology
• 19:34
  and of conferences and of giveaways. So you were talking about how you guys are
• 19:39
  working on doing some giveaways and stuff and all that whatever. So we've got a
• 19:43
  conference that we're going to be presenting in as, like, a vendor, right,
• 19:47
  as a sponsor sort of deal, I guess you could call it, in late October, out in
• 19:50
  -California. -Mm-hmm.
• 19:51
  And we're always trying to find something that's, like, gonna be interesting for
• 19:54
  people to stop by and want to talk to us about or whatever, right? So we, like-
• 19:58
  -Yeah -... more than anything we wanna just be,
• 19:59
  like, a fun booth, right? Like, how can people kind of Just, what's something that
• 20:02
  could be interesting and fun?
• 20:04
  -Mm-hmm. -Just almost more than, like, "Hey, let's
• 20:06
  get a sales pitch." It's like, "Let's just have a good interaction." Like, people
• 20:08
  -like to- -Yeah
• 20:08
  ... work with people they like. You know what I mean?
• 20:10
  -Yeah. -And so
• 20:11
  let's just have a conversation, like, "How's the conference going?" And do
• 20:14
  something fun, right? So we have this, uh, typing test that we're creating, which is
• 20:21
  pretty cool. Um, if you've never seen Monkeytype, uh, I think that's the...
• 20:27
  It's, like, I think it's monkeytype.io or whatever. But it's, it's really cool. It's
• 20:30
  a really simple typing test. And it's open source, and so you can run it on your
• 20:35
  own. You can modify it, of course, do all that stuff. But it's really, really good.
• 20:39
  And so we are going to fork that and use that as, like, our typing test on our
• 20:43
  little machine. Um, and we bought a iMac, like one of the yellow iMacs. You know how
• 20:49
  -they have the colored ones? -Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 20:51
  Um, yeah. Not the old ones, but, like, the new ones that are just, like, the really,
• 20:54
  -really- -Yeah, the new ones. Yeah
• 20:54
  ... thin pane. Yeah. They look gorgeous. And so we got a yellow one, 'cause our
• 20:58
  colors are black and yellow. And then we're getting a custom keyboard, so we're
• 21:02
  getting a Keychron. That's like a 50%. It's, like, only the three rows of keys,
• 21:06
  -right? It's like the- -Right. Okay
• 21:07
  ... space bar and, like, you know, just the keys. And that's it. Like, there's
• 21:11
  nothing else on this thing. And then I'm gonna have Austin... Uh, what's his name?
• 21:16
  -Austin, Austin, Austin. -Oh yeah.
• 21:19
  -Austin... Is it Austin Cameron? -I'm looking for... Yeah, that's it. I
• 21:22
  think it's Austin Cameron. Yeah. Um, I'm gonna have him do a custom key cap
• 21:27
  -for me- -Mm-hmm
• 21:27
  ... for our, our logo, for Silver Connect. That's gonna be on the top left corner
• 21:31
  there. And then, uh, we're gonna have, like, a desk mat and stuff. Anyway, it's
• 21:34
  gonna be really fun. But the thing we're giving away
• 21:37
  is... Have you ever heard of, like, the Nothing Phone?
• 21:41
  -Yes. -Oh, it's so cool.
• 21:43
  -Yes. -So
• 21:44
  it's an Android-based phone. It's not like the simple phones where it's like it only
• 21:48
  -does two things. It's not that. -Yeah.
• 21:49
  It's called the Nothing Phone, but it's just the aesthetic of it is super cool.
• 21:53
  -Mm-hmm. -Um, super, super cool. Well, they have
• 21:56
  headphones
• 21:57
  that are like AirPod Pros. That's kinda like what they look like.
• 22:00
  -Yeah. -You know?
• 22:01
  -Yeah. -The case is a little bit different.
• 22:02
  They only came out recently. Like, within the last couple of months-
• 22:03
  -Yeah -... I think.
• 22:04
  -Yeah. -Yeah.
• 22:05
  And it's, uh, it's got a clear case and the piece of the headphone is clear as
• 22:09
  well, so you can see sort of like the drivers inside the headphone. It looks so
• 22:13
  cool. And so they have black, white and yellow. So I ordered one of each color.
• 22:18
  Uh, again, 'cause there are, like, our colors for our booth and everything, and
• 22:21
  -we're gonna be giving those away. -Yeah.
• 22:22
  -I'm so excited. It's gonna be really fun. -Nice.
• 22:24
  Um, and so that's always, it- it's sort of an interesting challenge. Like, you know,
• 22:28
  what's the thing you're gonna give away? What's something you can do that's fun but
• 22:32
  -it's not- -Mm-hmm
• 22:33
  ... like, cheesy and, or, or over the top, or not too involved? Like, you don't want
• 22:37
  something like... A typing test is, like, a minute. Actually, a minute's a long
• 22:40
  time to sit there and, like, whatever. So, like, 15-second typing test. You know
• 22:43
  what I mean? It's 15 seconds. Like, anybody can take 15 seconds to do that
• 22:46
  sort of thing. And then how do you sort of brand it? So it's like once they get done
• 22:50
  with the typing test, it's got this fun little, like, interaction that says, like,
• 22:53
  you know, "Regardless of how fast you type, you could've done this faster by
• 22:56
  using our product." Whatever. Something stup-
• 22:58
  -Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. -Something stupid and silly. But, like, it
• 22:59
  has a personality with it. Uh, but like get a little marketing hook in there. So
• 23:03
  -anyway, yeah- -Yeah
• 23:04
  ... we'll get through some of that stuff. But it's been fun. It's been cool. Um, I
• 23:07
  really like this,
• 23:08
  the process of just building up these cool marketing things. And it's like, I want
• 23:12
  to design something that I would find delightful. You know, that I would be-
• 23:16
  -Yeah -... like, "Oh that's really cool." Um, and
• 23:18
  -so- -Yeah
• 23:18
  ... people give away AirPod Pros and stuff like that. But for me, like, these are
• 23:21
  just so unique, these headphones. I've never seen 'em in the wild ever.
• 23:24
  -Yeah. Yeah. -Uh, and it just looks so cool that I would
• 23:28
  like... That's definitely something I would want to have. I'll, I'll, I'll come
• 23:32
  -do a typing test for that, you know? -Yeah.
• 23:33
  -So... -Prizes-
• 23:34
  -It'll be fun -... prizes are always a tricky one. Like,
• 23:36
  the, the sponsors will bring their own things. I know Titan did, like, the, the
• 23:41
  -custom keychain keycaps- -Yeah. Yeah, those are fun
• 23:44
  ... which had, like, the light-up key. Um-
• 23:46
  -Yeah. -But, uh, you know, and then Givebutter had
• 23:50
  -this, this stupid design. -Yeah.
• 23:53
  Like, I've got, I've got part of it done, but I hate it. Um, I told them- ... I
• 23:57
  hated it. And, uh,
• 24:00
  I took a video of, like, the solved one so that I can one day maybe put it back
• 24:04
  together, 'cause it's... Yeah. But it's always interesting to, as you say, uh,
• 24:08
  especially for a, for a sponsor or someone presenting in the exhibition spaces,
• 24:15
  people don't necessarily need your product or know your product or want to use your
• 24:21
  product or whatever. But if you've got something cool that will hook them in just
• 24:23
  for a conversation, even the, the conversation is really good. Like, one of
• 24:27
  our sponsors last year, they brought a pickleball set.
• 24:31
  -Yeah, yeah. -Now, they brought a pickleball set. One,
• 24:33
  -one for every attendee, and it was just- -Oh, wow
• 24:35
  ... something different that... You know, you could... You've got a paddle and a
• 24:39
  ball and, um, and you go and hang out with the sponsor, and you just talk to them.
• 24:44
  And, you know, you might not have an immediate use to it, but through that
• 24:47
  conversation you may find, oh, you know, at least the name is there, that, yeah, I
• 24:50
  could use this thing at some point in the future. So, it's, it's cool to, to do that
• 24:54
  kind of stuff. Um, from a, like, from a conference organizer perspective, it's
• 24:59
  always... I'm always looking for things 'cause, yeah, you can do the, the, the
• 25:05
  AirPods and you can give away the Apple TVs and things like that, but there's
• 25:08
  something... Expectation. And, and for the Laravel ecosystem, it's generally a
• 25:13
  sound, um, generalization that
• 25:17
  90% of the people there are gonna own a Mac, and the chance of-
• 25:20
  -Yeah, yeah -... of winning a prize and, like, you
• 25:22
  know, if you don't have an iPhone and you win AirPods, it's... It can work, but it's
• 25:26
  -not the best experience. -Yeah, it's a pain in the neck, yeah.
• 25:29
  So, it's always a matter of, like, trying to figure out what can we get as a prize
• 25:33
  that has broad appeal irrespective of your existing ecosystem, which obviously we
• 25:38
  can't account for
• 25:39
  at the time of giving away a random prize.
• 25:41
  -Right, right. -So, the- the- the Switch is always a good
• 25:43
  one because it's like, here is a Nintendo Switch that you can now be, you know, in
• 25:47
  that ecosystem. Or, um, you know, we had the, the MacBook Air last year because,
• 25:53
  you know, a Mac Mini's cool, but you wanna give someone something where there's no
• 25:57
  expectation that they need to bring anything to it. Like, you give someone a
• 26:00
  MacBook and they can plug it in and turn it on and they can start using it straight
• 26:03
  -away. -Yeah, yeah.
• 26:04
  Whereas the Mac Mini, well, there's the expectation of they've gotta have a
• 26:07
  -keyboard- -They've gotta have a display, yeah
• 26:09
  ... and they've gotta have a, you know, all this extra stuff, so... Always
• 26:11
  thinking about those things and trying to balance being just Apple things versus, or
• 26:16
  maybe we get some Sony headphones or some Bose headphones or the-
• 26:19
  -Yeah, yeah -... but nothing ones are interesting
• 26:21
  because
• 26:23
  they certainly have a certain look to them.
• 26:26
  -Yeah. -And I don't know that I would necessarily
• 26:28
  want to wear them outside in public, but other people may be less, uh, less
• 26:33
  particular about that. So, yeah, always trying to find things that, that people
• 26:39
  are interested in, or that would be interested, you know, that they would want
• 26:42
  to keep that, um, is always, uh, a bit of a challenge as well.
• 26:46
  For me, it's always like
• 26:48
  the thing I want to do is I want to be anything but ignored. Like, I, I don't
• 26:53
  even care, like, if they don't like the giveaway. I want it to be more unique than
• 26:57
  anybody else's. I want, like, even what we wear. I wear, we wear yellow shoes,
• 27:01
  like, at these conferences, and then we wear, like, really loud shirts, because I
• 27:06
  want them to have seen us and be like, "Oh, yeah, you got..." So, like, when, you
• 27:09
  know, we end up going to, like, they'll have lunch or whatever, they'd be like,
• 27:12
  "Oh, yeah, you guys are the ones wearing those yellow shirts, right?" Like, "Yeah,
• 27:14
  -exactly." -Mm-hmm.
• 27:15
  "Like, what do you guys do?" You know? So, it's like they've seen us, um, and it's
• 27:20
  -so- so anyway, that's- -You're not there, you stand out so that
• 27:21
  they look, you know, take a second look that, like, they commit to memory-
• 27:24
  -Exactly right -... that they've seen this thing a couple
• 27:26
  of times. "Oh, I've seen them out in public as well," and things like that,
• 27:29
  -so... -You got it. Yep, and then anything that's
• 27:31
  -just a conversation- -Yeah,
• 27:33
  -for anyone sponsoring- -Yeah
• 27:34
  ... anyone sponsoring Laracon, whether ours or any of the other Laracons
• 27:37
  -listening, you know? -Yeah.
• 27:38
  If you've been on the fence about it or trying to figure out what to do, something
• 27:43
  that, um, that stands out is, uh, is always interesting.
• 27:47
  Absolutely. Yep. And then driving conversations, you know what I mean? It's
• 27:50
  like, it's, it's, uh, so much about it, of it is about relationships, um, and if
• 27:55
  they had a good interaction with you and your team at the booth, like, even if they
• 27:59
  don't have an immediate use for that thing, 'cause, um, I mean, let's be real,
• 28:02
  like, conferences aren't really where you close the deals. It's where you start the
• 28:05
  -conversation. -Nope.
• 28:06
  -That's, that's what it is. -Yeah.
• 28:07
  It's just about building relationships. And so, you build those relationships and
• 28:10
  then when they have a need for that thing, like, "Oh, yeah, that's right, I did
• 28:13
  need," like, um, or, "I'm interested in switching. Well, I had that contact with
• 28:16
  that one guy at Sentry," or whatever it is, you know? And then-
• 28:19
  -Yeah -... um, you know, that's, that's the next
• 28:20
  product they look at. So,
• 28:22
  yeah, anyway, I think that's, um, I think that is good advice, though, for people
• 28:25
  that- that are presenting. It's like, just be a good person and have fun giveaways,
• 28:28
  and just try and make it a fun time to be at your booth. Don't always be pushing,
• 28:33
  like, "So what's the solution you guys are looking for?" It's like, you know, eh.
• 28:36
  -Yeah. -'Cause some people wanna talk about that.
• 28:38
  Most people just wanna, like, come get your stuff and have a positive
• 28:41
  -interaction. -Yeah, most people would just... Yeah,
• 28:42
  especially, like, and Laracon US, they did the, the stamp card thing, so there's
• 28:45
  gonna be a nonzero number of people that are just gonna want their, their stamp
• 28:49
  -card punched. Um- -Yep. Give 'em, give 'em the stuff.
• 28:53
  -But, you know- -Yeah, be, be kind.
• 28:55
  -Yeah. -Like, don't, like... You know.
• 28:57
  Yeah. You know, some people will just want that. Some people might be really into
• 29:00
  your swag, and it depends on how much swag you brought, like,
• 29:04
  I would assume that the sponsors are gonna try and qualify people for some of the
• 29:08
  cool stuff that they've got as well. It's like, "Well, this person just came for the
• 29:11
  stamp, so we'll give them the stamp." But someone that sticks around and talks for
• 29:14
  a minute or five or whatever, more inclined to wanna, you know, give them a
• 29:19
  T-shirt or a cap or something like that as well.
• 29:22
  Agreed. Agreed.
• 29:24
  Okay, couple of things I, I wanted to loop back to real quick. Um, we talked about
• 29:29
  this conference that myself and Ben Holman are talking about. We've got
• 29:33
  interesting
• 29:34
  ideas around it, but don't have any really solid updates, so just heads up. We
• 29:38
  talked about that last time and I really appreciate your insight from that last
• 29:41
  time. We've been working through some of those things and think we have some ideas,
• 29:44
  but nothing super concrete to share, so there's that. Um,
• 29:48
  we also have been talking about the idea of our team switching, um, where we're
• 29:52
  -handling our permissions. -Mm-hmm.
• 29:54
  Permission leasing, things like that. Um, did we talk at all about delegated users
• 30:00
  and delegated, like, managing users? Did we talk about that theme? We maybe had a
• 30:04
  -little bit. -We talked about, um... So, like, your
• 30:07
  manager delegating a subset of permissions to
• 30:11
  someone on the team 'cause they're going away or whatever else.
• 30:13
  -Yep, yep. -Yeah.
• 30:13
  -Okay. -Yeah.
• 30:13
  So, we did talk about that part. So, that's, we're, we're doing this in
• 30:16
  earnest, um, and it's been really cool. We're using enums all over the place for
• 30:20
  it and it's just been really delightful, and, um-
• 30:24
  -Mm-hmm. -It's worked pretty well. And so good
• 30:26
  report back on that. Like, I do think it's very possible to sort of move all of that
• 30:31
  role-based everything outside of that system, um, and have it work pretty dang
• 30:36
  -well.So, yeah. -That's cool.
• 30:36
  And so if that's anything you're interested in doing with your teams, like
• 30:40
  we've run into some, you know, things that we had to bang our head against the wall
• 30:43
  for a while, and, um, feel like we have some decent solutions. So, if anybody's
• 30:47
  looking to do something like that or has to, you know, interact with a third party
• 30:50
  where you're sorta doing some of that, that stuff, role-based stuff, and the
• 30:54
  permissions only live inside your app, but yeah, please feel free to reach out. I'd
• 30:57
  love to give any info, info that we've learned from that. Um, one other thing.
• 31:02
  Andy Hinkel, our very own Andy Hinkel at Wilbur is doing the worldwide meetup
• 31:05
  tomorrow. I got a preview of his talk today, which I was super delighted by. Um,
• 31:11
  -he- -Nice
• 31:11
  ... used to work at a, at a, uh, theme park, and so he kind of
• 31:16
  draws comparisons between these roller coasters and
• 31:21
  design, like software design, which was really fun. I learned some super cool
• 31:25
  -stuff about- -Nice
• 31:26
  ... roller coasters, actually, which I was like, I would do that. I would listen to
• 31:29
  him talk about roller coasters. I didn't even know that. It's really interesting.
• 31:30
  It's cool. It's cool to, to have a talk that kind of ties those things together.
• 31:34
  -We've got, uh- -Totally.
• 31:36
  We've got a couple of talks that are, that are going to do similar kind of
• 31:40
  storytelling this year, I think. So yeah, it's always... It, it gets people to sit
• 31:45
  up in their, in their seats and wake up a little bit, so. I mean, you know, this
• 31:48
  being the, the worldwide meetup, a little bit different in terms of presentation,
• 31:52
  but I think getting people to shift in their seats to actually listen is, is
• 31:56
  -always interesting. -I feel like if you're a subject matter
• 31:59
  expert on something other than software and you can bring that passion into your
• 32:04
  -talk, people are just- -Yeah
• 32:06
  ... very interested. You know, there's a lot of-
• 32:08
  -Absolutely -... people out there who know a lot of the
• 32:09
  software stuff, but like, even if, I mean, it could be gardening. It could be
• 32:12
  roller coasters. It could be, uh, storms. Like, like I know, you know, Andy, the
• 32:18
  same guy on our team, he's big into, like,
• 32:20
  weather, which is, sounds like, "Weather? Really?" But there is so much cool stuff
• 32:25
  that he's shown me, like all these different radars and readouts and like,
• 32:28
  "Oh, that's super interesting." And I feel like-
• 32:30
  -Mm-hmm -... software developers as a sort of like
• 32:32
  a whole are just forever learners. Just, there's always some interesting, weird
• 32:37
  things. Like, I wanna know about that. And so-
• 32:40
  -Yeah -... um, if you're able to sort of combine
• 32:41
  your passions, I think that's always a really good thing too, 'cause people just
• 32:45
  feel that, you know? It's, it's... They can feel your energy around that
• 32:48
  -particular thing. -Mm-hmm.
• 32:49
  And it's just fun to be able to participate in that with people. So yeah,
• 32:53
  I'm excited for that tomorrow. So, if you get a chance to watch that, that's super
• 32:55
  cool. I don't know if our, you know, our, um, podcast will be out by then, but if...
• 33:00
  I'm sure it'll be recorded, so you should definitely check that out.
• 33:02
  -Yeah. -Um, okay. Omarchi? Is that what it's
• 33:06
  called? How do you pronounce this thing? DHH's Linux cur-
• 33:09
  -Omarchi. -Omarchi. Omarchi?
• 33:12
  -Omarchi. Omarchi. -Have you looked at this at all? It's like
• 33:15
  all the hotness. Everybody's running Omarchi now.
• 33:18
  Yes. Everyone's on it. Yeah, I've been- On, like, framework laptops. On, you know,
• 33:20
  run on Linux, everything. On framework laptops, yeah.
• 33:21
  -It's like whatever. -I got very excited the other day 'cause
• 33:24
  I'm like, I've got this iMac under my desk that has been sitting in this box-
• 33:27
  -Right? -... for about four years. I'm like, "I'll
• 33:29
  just install it on that." But it's a, it's a whole headache because of the like-
• 33:32
  -Is it? Okay, that's the question -... secured chip on there as well. So
• 33:34
  it's, unfortunately, not gonna do that. Um,
• 33:38
  I did run it up in a, in a virtual machine on my NAS for about five minutes and was
• 33:43
  like, "This is cool, I'd like to explore it." So I started... I had this Intel NUC,
• 33:48
  you know, these little mini PC things. Um, they used to be, like, my local
• 33:52
  -server, and I've, like, migrated- -Sure, sure
• 33:54
  ... everything off of it
• 33:56
  onto the NAS now, which I've been, which has been a project that I was gonna do for
• 33:59
  about a year since I got the NAS,
• 34:02
  with the intent to then install Omarchi on the NUC
• 34:06
  and use that as like, you know, to play around with, with some dev stuff on there.
• 34:11
  Um, so I did that last weekend and I turned the NUC off. And I've just, like,
• 34:15
  left it off this week to make sure that I've moved everything off that I needed
• 34:18
  to, that, like, things I would, um, not access very often, that all of that kinda
• 34:23
  stuff is still there. And then the intent is to install it on there. But I've
• 34:27
  realized that the NUC is old enough that it doesn't have any USB-C on it, so I have
• 34:31
  -to- -Oh, interesting
• 34:32
  ... connect a, h- have to connect HDMI to a, to a monitor, which involves, you know,
• 34:37
  uncabling everything and running a cable back there and all of that kinda stuff. So
• 34:41
  -we'll see how, how that goes. But, uh- -It is really interesting to see. Like, but
• 34:45
  the same, same principle, same pattern. These are the things like Aaron Francis
• 34:48
  talks about. Like, the thing that you're excited about, just tell people about it.
• 34:51
  -Like, people- -Yeah
• 34:52
  ... love and can feel the energy. Like, DHH has been so excited about this. This
• 34:55
  -is what he's tweeting about. -Yeah.
• 34:56
  And I feel like it's just gotten so much traction, number one, because he's DHH.
• 34:59
  But number two, 'cause he's just so freaking excited about it. He's just like-
• 35:02
  Yeah. Yeah,
• 35:02
  ... "Oh, this is the thing. Everybody should use it. Like, this is really great.
• 35:05
  Like, if you're not using it, you definitely should be. And if you're coming
• 35:08
  from Mac, like, just stick with it. Give it a month." You know what I mean?
• 35:11
  -Yeah. -Like, all the things. It's, but it's, it's
• 35:13
  just cool. It's like there's so much energy around it.
• 35:15
  -Yeah. -It's like, I kinda wanna try it. I have no
• 35:17
  need to try it. Like, I've got everything I need-
• 35:19
  -Yeah -... with, with the current OS. Like, I
• 35:21
  don't really need a project. But it's sort of like, eh-
• 35:23
  -Yeah -... I'm really curious. I kinda wanna just
• 35:24
  -play with it, you know? -Yeah. I'll give it a go. Like, I'd like to
• 35:26
  use it as, for a, for a development machine, just to have something on, on my
• 35:30
  desk that I can, like, just, just go with. But-
• 35:33
  -Yeah, yeah -... losing the Apple ecosystem is, is a
• 35:36
  no-go for me. Like, it wouldn't become my primary because-
• 35:39
  -Yeah -... you know, giving up iMessage, giving
• 35:40
  -up Fotos, giving up Music. -Totally.
• 35:41
  I mean, like, all of this stuff that kind of, uh, iCloud, all of that stuff that...
• 35:45
  Like, I'm not, I don't want alternatives to it. I'm leaving all of that alone. I
• 35:49
  would use this in addition to, which is why I've got, like-
• 35:53
  -Yeah -... a secondary machine that I'll install
• 35:54
  it on. It's not a, um... It's not gonna be my primary driver or anything like that.
• 36:00
  -But, um- -Which seems like a fun middle ground.
• 36:01
  -I'm eager to try. They just- -Yeah.
• 36:02
  Yeah. They, um, they just released, uh, version two, I think overnight at the time
• 36:07
  of this recording, which is like, got a whole bunch of fixes in there, a whole
• 36:10
  bunch of tweaks, whole bunch of changes. There's like now a, a five-minute install
• 36:15
  ISO. So before you had to install Arch Linux and then run the Omarchi
• 36:20
  installer, which would pull down their repo and configure everything in the
• 36:23
  blessed DHH way. Whereas now it's just like here's the ISO. It's got everything
• 36:27
  ready to go. You don't have to do all these manual steps. You don't have to
• 36:30
  -enable- -That's cool
• 36:31
  ... the wifi card yourself and all of this kind of stuff, so.
• 36:33
  -Yeah. Yeah. -I mean-
• 36:35
  -Nice -... not that, not that it was hard. Like,
• 36:36
  it was 10 minutes to install before and now it's five minutes. But they've done a
• 36:39
  whole bunch of stuff like building their own package manager because people
• 36:42
  apparently had DDoSed the, the, the package, uh-It's, um,
• 36:49
  -the the upstream, like- -Repository
• 36:50
  ... where all the packages are hosted, the repository where all of that stuff's
• 36:52
  hosted, so that, that caused a bunch of issues for a few weeks. And DHH is like,
• 36:56
  "Look, if I did this by accident because I've got lots of people interested in it,
• 37:00
  I'm sorry." Like, "We'll pay money, whatever we can do to help smooth that
• 37:03
  over." If it's, like, genuinely a DDoS attack because, like, people are attacking
• 37:07
  the package repository, then like, "You guys suck," and, and all of this kind of
• 37:11
  -stuff, as, as DHH does, so, um- -Yeah
• 37:14
  ... it is... Like, he's got Atom on it. You know, at, the-
• 37:17
  Yeah. Yeah. I saw him talking about that. Yeah
• 37:19
  I think Framework sent him a Framework computer, and he's gonna try it. So I
• 37:21
  don't know.
• 37:22
  -It's, uh- -That's fun. Yeah. Kevin Rose, I saw from,
• 37:25
  like, you know, back in the day. Like, he was running it on a Framework machine. And
• 37:29
  yeah. It's just, it's just cool. A lot of, a lot big, big names kind of running
• 37:33
  it and trying it out, and
• 37:35
  -it's, it's fun. -Every time he mentions it, I'm like, "Oh,
• 37:37
  I'll go, go look at the Beelink website again." I'm like, "Should I buy a Beelink
• 37:40
  -mini PC?" No, no, no don't buy a Beelink. -Oh, no.
• 37:43
  Like, 'cause it's not worth spending the money on it for something that is not...
• 37:46
  Like, it's not that I fear that I would want it to become my primary, it's that I
• 37:50
  would
• 37:52
  -spend money on this thing- -Spend too much time, yeah
• 37:54
  ... knowing that it's only ever going to be a secondary thing-
• 37:58
  -Yeah, yeah -... and it won't get the use to justify
• 38:00
  -it. But just- -Agree
• 38:01
  ... just on that, like these, these mini PCs have gotten so good. Um, like, uh, it,
• 38:07
  uh, it's got, like, a 5 gigahertz AMD Ryzen processor in it with its own
• 38:12
  -discreet AI capabilities. -Geez.
• 38:14
  It's got 32 gig of RAM, one terabyte hard drive, and it's, like, $600 Australian.
• 38:19
  It's like, they're not even expensive, and they're far and away more capable
• 38:23
  machines than, you know, desktop machines that we bought five years ago.
• 38:26
  -Oh, yeah. -Ten years ago.
• 38:27
  -Yep. -In this little, like-
• 38:28
  -That's impressive -... Mac mini sized puck.
• 38:31
  -Yep. -So.
• 38:32
  Yeah, they're pretty incredible. Yeah, you can do all sorts of cool stuff with those
• 38:34
  -too. -And it's, like, you look at it, and you
• 38:35
  go, you know, it's only $500, and it's, like, all... But again, for me to use it,
• 38:40
  -like- -Yeah. Finding the time to-
• 38:42
  -... in the background -... do something with it. Yeah.
• 38:44
  -Yeah. -Yeah. Exactly.
• 38:46
  Um, yeah. If, if it could replace the entire Apple ecosystem, sure. And, and
• 38:51
  sure, yes, there are alternatives. You could use Dropbox instead of iCloud, and
• 38:54
  you could use this instead of that, and all of... But I don't, I don't want to do
• 38:58
  -all of that, 'cause- -Yeah. Yeah
• 38:59
  ... my wife is not gonna switch to a non-Apple device just to be able to, like,
• 39:02
  send me text messages and things like that. We're not gonna move to Signal or
• 39:06
  Telegram or whatever else to, to send messages just because I've decided I wanna
• 39:10
  try this other thing out. Like, that is not practical.
• 39:13
  -That's not happening. Yeah. -And, like, my family's not gonna move,
• 39:16
  and, yeah, all this other stuff. It's just, it's not-
• 39:19
  -Too heavily invested. I get it. Yeah. -It would, it would definitely be a-
• 39:21
  -It's like if I was starting over- -... a ticket price
• 39:23
  ... if I was starting over from square one, and I wasn't already so heavily
• 39:26
  invested, maybe. You know what I mean? But it's like, I'm not. I'm just not at that
• 39:29
  point anymore, so. Stuck in my ways. I'm an old man. Um-
• 39:33
  -Yeah. -Okay. Two more things.
• 39:35
  -I'm trying to convince- -Number one-
• 39:36
  ... uh, the boss. I'm trying to convince the boss-
• 39:38
  -Yeah -... to get us all Omachi devices for-
• 39:41
  -Oh, there you go -... work.
• 39:42
  That'd be fun. That would be actually cool.
• 39:43
  'Cause if I could use it all day, every day, it'd be fine.
• 39:45
  Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And if I didn't have to pay for it, even better.
• 39:48
  -Yeah. -Um, I forgot to tell you, my daughter got
• 39:50
  smacked in the head with a baseball bat today at school. Um-
• 39:53
  -I believe. -And-
• 39:54
  Happens to... Kids, uh, kids aren't coordinated, and then-
• 39:56
  Yeah. Huge split right in her forehead. Had to go get stitches. It was a mess.
• 39:59
  That poor kid. She's doing fine now, but little headache, but made it alive. I'll
• 40:03
  send you pictures. It was... Dude, it was
• 40:07
  -brutal. Looked like a gun- -Sprung place, sprung time?
• 40:08
  I mean, I, I mean, not to be overly dramatic, but it looked like a freaking
• 40:12
  gunshot wound. I mean, head wounds are always so bloody.
• 40:14
  -Yeah. -You know what I mean? Like-
• 40:15
  -Yeah -... their, theirs just looks like a mess.
• 40:16
  The, the PE teacher sh- said, "That's the most blood I've ever seen in an injury in
• 40:21
  this gym." And she's like, "I've never seen that much blood." And I'm like, "Holy
• 40:24
  cow.
• 40:25
  -Poor kid." -Thanks.
• 40:26
  -And so she was, it was a mess. Anyway- -Glad it could be my child, you know?
• 40:29
  Seris- seriously. So anyway, yeah. She's fine, but that was crazy. Um, the other
• 40:35
  thing I was going to talk about, and I think we're... I mean, how far are we in?
• 40:38
  -I'm not sure. -We're at 40.
• 40:39
  I feel like I do this... 40? Okay. All right, I'm gonna, I'm gonna real quick
• 40:42
  mention this,
• 40:43
  'cause we've talked about it a little bit before. Twilio conversations. So this is
• 40:47
  something we're working on, where we're doing, like, agent text conversations back
• 40:50
  and forth. Um, it's been interesting sort of the structure that we've come up with,
• 40:54
  which is that all the source of truth lives on Twilio. So Twilio is the one who
• 40:58
  is brokering all those conversations. But if we want to be able to do anything with
• 41:03
  them in our own sort of domain, we have to store our own copies of those messages
• 41:09
  so that we can enrich them
• 41:11
  and not have to pull those conversations down every single time we wanna do
• 41:15
  something with them, right? It's like, I want to be able to do things in the
• 41:17
  background in the case I haven't heard from those conversations in a bit or
• 41:21
  things like that. So, um, it's, it's an interesting one. We can talk about it next
• 41:25
  time about how exactly we're doing that. And also, like, the nice thing about this
• 41:29
  too is that Twilio is... has higher SLAs than we do, right? So if there's a
• 41:35
  conversation that comes in that we missed, it's possible that, like, maybe a webhook
• 41:40
  -failed. Possible, right? -Yeah.
• 41:42
  Maybe, maybe it... But for them, they still have their copy of it. And so what
• 41:46
  we can do is we can inspect our own indexes on our side, and if we get a new
• 41:50
  message in that is further along than one off of our indexes, we can auto resync the
• 41:55
  conversation in the background and then redisplay it. It's also we can use
• 41:59
  LayerVal presence channels on our side to kind of see who's in which conversations
• 42:04
  and who's busy responding to what. We're working on doing, like, timeouts and
• 42:08
  alerting and ownership. So if somebody has it, but they haven't responded in a
• 42:11
  certain amount of time, roll it over to a manager or escalate it to another person.
• 42:14
  So all these sorts of cool business
• 42:17
  interactions that we're having to decide, um, you know, our heuristics around what,
• 42:21
  how we want that to behave. It's been really, it's been really fun. And so
• 42:25
  Wilbur Power has been working on that and using Flux, uh, UI, um, for that, which
• 42:29
  has been really delightful too. It looks so-
• 42:32
  -Nice -... good. It really does. It looks so
• 42:34
  good. Uh, Caleb been, uh... Caleb's done such a good job with that.
• 42:37
  Um, and so yeah. Shout out to Caleb and his team. Doing awesome. And yeah, we can
• 42:44
  -talk more about that next time. -Yeah. Cool. Yeah. No, that, um-So, my, my
• 42:49
  boss has been doing a proof of concept at the moment with, um, 11 Labs speech
• 42:55
  generation and, well, for like lead, lead qualification.
• 42:59
  -Okay. Okay. -So if we get a lead from someone, we can
• 43:02
  then have
• 43:03
  the, uh, the machine call the customer, you know, and, and qualify them. You know,
• 43:08
  "Do you do this? Do you have this? We need this information." You know, all that
• 43:10
  -kind of prequalification stuff- -Yeah
• 43:12
  ... before then handing off to a, an actual human to, to do the next step. So,
• 43:17
  interesting to see, you know, just how much is possible now with all of this
• 43:22
  tooling, you know, to actually make a phone call to someone.
• 43:25
  -Yeah. -And I think, I think his proof of concept,
• 43:27
  he's using Twilio at the moment as well, um, maybe.
• 43:31
  Probably for the program, telephony stuff, yeah.
• 43:33
  Yeah. For the, yeah, for the conversation, and then, like, shelling out to
• 43:36
  Elevenlabs to, to do, like, the actual voice gen and the end... Like, it's
• 43:40
  indistinguishable, uh, I haven't heard it, hasn't called me yet.
• 43:43
  -It is. It's amazing. -But it's, like, indistinguishable from a
• 43:45
  -machine. -Yeah, it's really amazing now.
• 43:47
  I think, you know, if you can keep the latency down-
• 43:49
  -That's what it is -... in terms of processing the responses
• 43:52
  and, and responding back to someone, then, um, you know, that'd be really cool. So,
• 43:57
  yes, a lot of that kinda stuff. I think, as we're coming up for air from a lot of
• 44:01
  the, um, work that we've been doing in terms of, uh, commercial work and in terms
• 44:07
  of, you know, paying down technical debt and things like that, we are this close to
• 44:11
  getting rid of tenancy and, and flattening everything down just to a
• 44:14
  single, uh, database. And, and, like, a normal, quote-unquote, Laravel application
• 44:20
  is, um, very good. So I'm just... I'm in the stage now where I'm just rebasing a
• 44:25
  couple of times a day, just to keep parity as we, as we push out a few other bits
• 44:29
  and pieces. And then we'll cut this across and then
• 44:32
  it'll be done. Makes testing so much easier, schema migration. So all of this
• 44:36
  stuff, now, now that all of this technical debt repayment is done, the fact that we
• 44:41
  have the opportunity to explore
• 44:44
  not just, like, using AI for the sake of AI, but how can we solve some real
• 44:48
  problems u- you know, leveraging AI, which is the question that I always ask every
• 44:53
  time. You know, the higher ups are always like, "Let's use AI, because we're gonna
• 44:57
  get left behind." And we're like, "What are we gonna use it for?" And they're
• 44:59
  like, "Well, let's use AI." Okay. Let's figure out what we can actually use it
• 45:03
  -for. -Right.
• 45:03
  So there's a couple of things that we've got-
• 45:04
  -Yeah, give me an objective, yeah -... um, members of the team have got on
• 45:07
  the go at the moment that, that look really cool that we've done, so... Yeah,
• 45:11
  it's, uh, it's a cool, cool time, I think. You know, as I said-
• 45:15
  -Yeah -... I've said before, I'm late to the
• 45:16
  game, but I'm, I'm starting to see some, like, very real possibilities and I'm
• 45:20
  starting to understand better, um,
• 45:24
  how we can leverage some of these tools
• 45:26
  as... You know, people that know what they're doing, uh, to, to, to really
• 45:31
  leverage them to, you know, do more. Which, you know, people have been saying
• 45:34
  for ages, but I, I have seen now through my own, like, usage and from... Like,
• 45:41
  Aaron Francis putting out his two-hour video of building his email, um, email
• 45:46
  builder thing, like, and seeing how he uses it, and it's actually clicked for me
• 45:50
  now. So, you know, I'm two years late, but better late than never I suppose.
• 45:54
  I'll have to check that out. I know that I heard that video was really, really good,
• 45:57
  I have not watched it yet, so I'll have to check that out.
• 45:59
  Anyone that's still on the fence, that doesn't get it, like, like me-
• 46:01
  -Watch that video. -Um, yeah, watch that video. I think it
• 46:04
  will, it will make a lot more sense when you
• 46:07
  understand how
• 46:09
  as a, as someone who's got some experience and understands how to build software,
• 46:14
  um... Like, I use it, every time I do a rebase now, 'cause we're on a newer
• 46:18
  version of PHPStan, there are things that are not violations in master or in the
• 46:23
  main branch that are now violations because of the newer version of PHPStan.
• 46:27
  -Mm. Mm-hmm. -So now what I do is I fire up Opencode and
• 46:30
  I say, "Hey, I've just rebased on main, I've got some PHPStan violations, can you
• 46:37
  have a look at what those are and propose fixes for me?" And it runs off, it runs
• 46:41
  Stan, it goes and figures out what the violations are, figures out how to fix
• 46:44
  them, and then it, you know, makes all of the changes, and then I just have to go
• 46:48
  through and review the, the, the, the
• 46:51
  changes in Git and go, "Yep, that's fine, that's fine, that's fine." And, uh, and it
• 46:54
  makes sure everything passes. So for me to do that, it would take an hour to go
• 46:58
  like, "Look at this, this obscure PHPStan error sometimes." Go, "Okay, what is this
• 47:03
  trying to say? Okay, how do I fix it? Where is it? How many places do I have to
• 47:07
  -fix it in?" Go. -Yep.
• 47:09
  Whereas, like, you just tell, um, Claude or, you know, Opencode, "Go and fix this,"
• 47:15
  and it just churns in the background and you can go and do other things, which is
• 47:17
  nice. Which, a- again, people know this, people have been doing this for 12 months,
• 47:21
  18 months already, and I'm late to the party. I'm sorry. But, you know, I'm
• 47:26
  -fashionably late, it's fine. -No need to apologize, yeah. It's just
• 47:30
  that, you know, it's a young man's game, uh, or an early adopter man's game.
• 47:35
  -Keeping up. -You got it.
• 47:36
  -Yeah. -Hey folks, this is episode 181. Thanks so
• 47:38
  much for joining us. You can find show notes for this episode at
• 47:42
  northmeetsouth.audio/181. If you liked the show, please rate it up in your
• 47:46
  podcatcher of choice, five stars would be incredible. And of course, if you have any
• 47:49
  questions, hit us up on X, on Bluesky, all the places, @michaeldurinda,
• 47:53
  @jacobbennett1 or North South Audio. Folks, till next time, we'll see you
• 47:57
  later. Take it easy.