Latest / Hemispheric Views / 153: My Beloved!
Transcript
- HV153.mp3 All right, so this is what Jason thought was the off week. Sorry, Jason. He's half asleep. He doesn't seem particularly excited to be here. Are you kidding me? I'm incredibly fired up to be here. Talking to two Australians, it's the best thing you could ever wish for. It's my perfect Saturday evening. I've never placed any kind of emphasis or belief in these things, but you know when people do like sentiment checks of like online communication or brands and stuff, it's like, how are you going to quantify that? I would love if there's some listener out there who's listened to the whole catalogue, or you know those people who've actually gone all the way back and listened to the whole thing all the way through? They're crazy. Is there some way to actually gauge the sentiment or change in mood or vibe of this show? And maybe our collective enthusiasm as we've gone on. Vibes. Vibe check, they call that, I think. There's a challenge for anyone out there. I don't even know if it's possible. But if someone can like graph the sentiment or vibe of this show. Did Martin just call for a vibe check? Is that what happened right there? Is that what I did? Did I? I don't know. He's in with the kids. He just solidified himself as the youth of the program. But I said it in the most nerdy, formal, Martin way possible. And I have solidified myself as the old by calling it a program. Ooh. Might as well say, are we, what's, I'm going to go listen to my stories now. Oh my God. On the wireless. Ooh, 153 is what they call this one. Well, to kick off 153, as we established, I'm like the, am I the podcast Sherpa? Is that what you guys called me when I was gone? Yes. Yes. Well, Sherpa Judy's engaged. I feel like this opening note item, Jason, was an inevitability for you. It was just a matter of time. Yeah. Bye-bye HomePods. I finally sold all the HomePods. They're all gone. There was eight of them and now there are zero of them. They're gone. Yeah. Eight. Yeah. A couple of revelations. First of all, they're not that great. Are we talking big ones or little ones? Any of them. They're literally just mediocre fine in terms of audio quality. They're okay. They're fine. They sound okay. They're horribly annoying to deal with. You try to airplay to them. You try to send stuff to them. They don't work. You can't find them. They don't show up on the network. there's no other way to get anything into the goddamn thing if you want to play audio they're just kind of fine like when they work cool when they don't yeah anyway they're gone also you don't need one in every single room turns out so let me tell you what happened here you got a home pod how do you power it it's got to plug into the wall that's kind of annoying kind of feels like a home pod you should be able to just kind of bring around with you wherever you go nope sorry it's got a sit plugged into the wall so we swapped them out got rid of the home pods we've got now a uh i'm gonna butcher the names here it's a sonos i want to say one of them is called a roam 2 and one of them is called something else too so that's probably pretty is that the one that looks like a toblerone one yeah so yes one of them is the toblerone one Yeah, it's the Toblerone 2, I think they call it. That's the little one. We've got that upstairs. And that's got a little kind of like a MagSafe-y puck kind of thing. So it can sit on that and charge. And then you could take it off and take it with you. And then the other one is like a bigger one, like a big boy. He's a thick speaker. But also wireless. so you can pull it off the little stand, take it wherever you go. So now we just have those two, and you just kind of bring a speaker wherever you want it to be, and it works great. So what are you using for your TV? Oh, sorry, yeah, good point. So the stereo pair is gone, and then that is now a Sonos Arc Ultra? Soundbar. Yeah, yeah, the long stick one, which sounds incredible. It sounds very good. It does the like weird fake bouncing off the walls thing, whatever that's called. And it sounds, it sounds incredible. I love it. I'm looking at the website. That's actually what they call it. What's that? The weird fake bouncing off the walls thing. Yeah. That's the technical term they came up with. Yeah. I don't remember what that's called, but there's like something where it like mimics, like it's, you got speakers in the ceiling and behind you and all that. And like, yeah, it, it sounds, It's like, it's like WYSIWYG. You just say all the letters. Yeah, exactly. That's exactly right. Yeah. So yeah, HomePods are gone. I don't miss them at all. And all the Sonos ones are working great. They've got line in. If you wanted to do a line in, go for it. That's fine. Can I play from my, from my Plex amp? Sure can. They show up right in Plex amp. Yeah, they work out really nicely. You mean they, they had the courage to include a line in? Yeah. Yeah. It's weird. Like the device is so huge that there just happened to be so much space where you could actually put connectivity in there and it wouldn't actually impede the product at all. It would actually make it more functional. Weird. So I thought Sonos were bad though, because they had that app redesign that everybody raged about. Well. And so I thought we were all off Sonos now. I don't know. I find them to be quite great, actually. I think I opened the app when I set them up, but I don't think I've opened it since, so I'm not really sure what that's about. Yeah, I couldn't. We have one old Sonos here. It's underused, and it doesn't have a voice assistant, but it's one of those little bookshelf ones. Voice assistant. It sounds good. Also, the Sonos have a physical switch on them that you can disable voice assistant on all any of any or all of them they all have a physical switch where you can be like yeah i don't want that and you can just say full off which i think is great because that was the other thing where you'd be in a room having talking to someone and all of a sudden uh-huh and you're like i hate you that was mildly pornographic jason i hate That'll come back in future edits. Yeah. I can't stand when you would say, let me look that up for you on the internet. No, stop. Just stop. I can't think of any context when you'd want your home speaker system to look up something for you. Well, all of that being said, happy for you. I still love the stereo pair in our space, but I understand what you mean about the multi-room thing because we have a couple of other home pods in the house, just like a mini in one bedroom and a mini in the other. And I think they work well. Like we have, maybe it's the concrete walls, maybe things reverberate or sound bigger than what they are. But the moment you get to like eight HomePods, I can imagine you would have some connectivity woes. Yeah. Or things would get a bit annoying. It's fine to have one in every room, but it's so much easier to just grab the thing and bring it with me to the next room than to like open up my phone, fiddle around with changing rooms with where it's going to go. and then it doesn't show up in the list for whatever reason. And then the sink is off. I can just pick it up and like go to the other room and it's, or, you know, my gosh, what if I wanted to take it into the backyard outside? Oh, that would be crazy. These are like IP, whatever rated. So you can take them outside and they can get wet and it's fine. They're yeah. It's, I like them a lot. They're very good. I was going to say, you've actually reminded me and I'll add this to the notes, but I read a nice blog piece, uh, by I'm probably going to mispronounce it. I think it's, Is it Mathieu? Mathieu's blog. And they wrote a blog piece called This Is Not The Future. I think they expanded it from a Mastodon update that they did. And it was talking about how nothing in technology is inevitable. Like things like internet connected beds are not inevitable. AI browsers are not inevitable. And I feel it relates perfectly to what you were saying about things like HomePods. Although I love them, there's nothing inevitable about the fact that you need to have like a permanently on voice assistant speaker that connects. You can use an analog line in it doesn't matter so yeah you can embrace these things but it's not inevitable if you want to carry a burke boombox around the house i support you please do yeah and they sound really i mean as far as sound they sound good so no no issue there i don't i wouldn't say they sound any worse or better i don't know i'm not an audiophile so there you go official review so as sherpa uh i feel it's my duty to move along to what is probably the most controversial topic of the year and we're putting it what in the last episode for 2025 feels appropriate just to stir the pot a bit um i think it's something that jason instigated but andrew you've got your basketball emoji next to it so would you like to introduce this yes so my question is what the heck is this new show notes app um i don't know where i don't know where jason found this thing um look i'm i want to come out and say i don't hate it but it was a bit of a i had to get my head around it because it's a bit like craft in what i what it feels like in that as team you have your personal notes then you have teams and then these notes show up as cards and i was a bit like oh that's weird and to be clear sorry because we haven't said the name it's called HackMD, a markdown note solution, which I agree is nice. I like the idea of markdown. Go on, Andrew. Yeah, yeah. And then I went into the editor itself. And at first I was befuddled. And then I realized that it's got the three mode situation where you can view it as a fully rendered piece. You can have edit mode where it is just like a text editor with some markdown nastities. And then we have the all-powerful side-by-side view, which is my beloved. And when I realized it had a side-by-side view, I was like, yes, text editor on the left, pretty Markdown on the right, sold. Yeah. I'm into it. I'm okay with it. I love that you said beloved because most of the time people use that term for loved ones or their partners, but now we've seen what makes you tick. 153 episodes in and Andrew's true love is a side-by-side view. Text editor. I know Markdown is divisive, that many people think it's not really that useful and you should embrace WYSIWYG and RTF and all those lovely things. For me, I like MicDown. I enjoy it. I like the fact it's consistent. I know what I'm going to get. So I'm okay with this. The one thing I don't like, though, Martin, I just said it's consistent and you know what you're going to get. Right. I realize I can now get two different basketballs. As emoji. So I have the Apple emoji basketball, or I can use the inbuilt, put an emoji name between two colons with autocomplete and it renders its own emoji. Which is weird because I don't see that. All I see is you have put two colons with basketball in the middle of it as a word. And that's all I see. No, look at it in preview mode. Yeah, the preview mode, you get a differently shaped and slanted basketball. Oh, I don't look at preview mode. Just text only. That's all I care about. Well, you're doing it wrong. Jason's above that, Andrew. All I wanted was something that doesn't freaking exist. I just want a bare bones text document that can be shared between multiple people. That's literally all I want. And that does not exist. This is the absolute closest I was able to get after weeks of searching, signing up for umpteen amounts of accounts at horrific, terrible tools that wanted me to spend $40 a month for text editors. This is all I wanted was a simple text doc. One doc. I don't even need multiple documents. I don't need multiple notes. I need one document. single text document that is shareable and editable simultaneously and that seems to be an impossibility in 2025 did you look in the open source world i dug up every dead open source project that exists you spunked that's what you did i have run multiple servers multiple vps's to try and build my own thing based on open source technologies. And it all was for naught. And this is where I ended up with whatever it is we're looking at right now. But I got to throw in, I empathize with you, Jason, and I can see why you went with this. And I like it in general, right? Because the Markdown thing, like you were saying, Andrew, it's really useful as a tool for something like the show notes that we put into Fireside that powers this podcast, right? Because Jason doesn't have to break the links out or reformat stuff. As we enter it, it transfers. And I can see how it completely removes his work if he needs to transfer stuff. So that's part of it, surely, right? Yes. And just a text file. That's all I want. I just want text. Even if it didn't render the markdown properly, don't care. I just want words on a page The three of us can be typing it at the same time and have it actually work. And just add to some behind the scenes drama for all of you listeners out there. Before this show today, right, we were having a bit of a chat in our group environment, a group chat. And I kind of shit stirred a bit too much because when I went to open it in Safari, because there's no app, which I can understand, I can respect. I'm happy to open it up in Safari. Unfortunately, the link that I wanted to add to the markdown notes, which is kind of the point, right, Jason, you want to have links. In the notes. Ideally. Would not paste. It wouldn't paste if I tried to hold down my finger. I checked content blockers and request desktop site. And then I thought, oh, surely it's just an iPhone thing. I'm going to go to the Mac. I opened up Safari. Ah, ah, ah, command V is not working. Right click, paste is there. I paste, nothing from the clipboard is going there. And then Jason, I suppose, in like a table flipping moment said, right, Martin can choose something live on the show as a replacement. That's it. You are now, I'm done. I'm done in my quest for a proper notes app. Well, I've opened it in crime and it's working, which is slightly offensive to me, but I'm happy to do it because I love both of you very much. That is not a solution. No, I do not accept that as a solution. You must now decree what is going to be the notes app going forward for 2026. Well, before I get to that answer, because there is an answer. I know what the answer is going to be. I'm going to troll both of you, right? I thought, I'm going to troll both of you. Let's see how this goes. But then the trolling wouldn't really work because, look, my first thought was everyone loves Jewel of the Defaults, episode 97. Everyone loves to talk about a good default in the Apple environment. And you know what? You've just heaped shit on me for years for apparently loving Apple Notes. I'm not annoyed with it, right? I don't hate it, but it's not my favourite. It's not my first thing to use. And I thought, you know, I'm just going to say Apple Notes. I'm going to troll them because they added Markdown support this year. But not actually typing in Markdown as far as I'm aware, but importing a Markdown file that then turns it into what you see in Notes already. Unless I'm wrong and you have to tap it into some sort of plugged in other app. Do you know what I'm talking about? Oh, it has Markdown now? I think there was Markdown support, but, and I tested it. Like I opened up a text edit file, saved it changing.txt to.md, saved it to my desktop and then shared it into Notes and it opened. But it imports it as an Apple Note. So, interesting. out there who knows more than I do can correct me and say, oh, Martin, you should have done this while standing on your head or something, and then it will actually work. But that was my lazy research before starting. So, anyway, that was my trolling answer. Apple notes, just to see you both shake your head at me. But then I thought, there is an app out there which has no history on this podcast, is absolutely the subject of no controversy whatsoever. And as far as I'm aware, fits the brief of a Markdown text editor that will make you both very happy. And no one has ever argued about it before. I'm terrified. It was hidden with a different spelling within the note name or sorry, within the descriptor that you gave before, Jason, which was bare bones. And that app is bare. But we can't share that, can we? No, no. Everyone loves bare. Andrew himself has not once ever insulted anyone listening to this. And I know that he will love bare. The answer is bare. I've tried so many times at bare. I can't even. I know. That's why I brought up just to see you rub your face. Oh, no. What if we just didn't do notes anymore? No, no. Look, what you're both missing here is that I've brought up two things that you both hate or don't want to do, which means that the answer must be HackMD. GitHub pages. No, we're not doing this anymore. Okay. I will open up Chrome and we will use the show notes. You have to get pull to do your notes and then you have to coordinate via messages that You're going to now do a push. And then whenever, when the push is good, then the next person gets to pull. Yeah, that'll be great. I can't wait to do that. For some executive decision. My executive decision as podcast Sherpa is we are not changing again. HackMD looks nice. It's good that it's marked down. We're not doing Apple Notes. We're not doing pages. We're not doing craft. We're not doing proton, all these bloody other things. I will open up Chrome or another alternative browser to make this work. There is no mobile solution. That's the other piece to many of these notes solutions is you find one that sort of kind of works, but it's god awful on mobile. So then you're kind of screwed and just stuck doing it on desktop, which is I've just said, you know what? I'm only going to put notes in when I'm on my computer. That's just where I'm at now. And that's what I'm going to do, too. So listeners, you heard it here first on the last episode of Hemispheric Views that I chose what Jason said. And Martin just needs to end. He just mandated that this is the last episode ever. I just heard him say that. I meant of this year. I said it before. Oh, of this year. Okay. Is HackMD Venture capital back? I don't know anything about it. Oh, great. I don't. Okay. Probably not. I don't know. Feel free to look it up. I look forward to learning all about it over the forthcoming year. And next topic, talking of alternative browsers, Vivaldi. should i be using that to open up hackmd.io yeah it works great in vivaldi i liked their no ai video yeah i was gonna say did you see their roadmap for 2026 i thought that was pretty funny it was just the guy he like walked up to the podium and said it's not ai and then walked away also i thought one of the best demonstrations about how to do a product announcement in a in a succinct way yeah it was like four or five seconds oh apple should take note google should take note just get up and say here's what's new move on thank you yeah i'm on uh i'm on day 17 of the vivaldi i like to say it like that um and it has been refreshingly nice i i'm still torn between side tabs and top tabs um i love i'm a side tab person, but on my new laptop, that's small. It's a little bit difficult to do side tabs because most websites like kind of freak out when they're that small and don't really look very good, which I think is just a sign of the times people design everything for like 27 inch monitors. Um, but Vivaldi has been great. I have all my bookmarks in it now. I use it, um, for, well, obviously I use it for web browsing, but I had all my bookmarks somewhere else. I've now just moved them into there because it's made more sense. I'm not using a ton of the features of it, but it just, as a basic browser, it's been very, very good. It's a nice, refreshing experience. I think it's got some cool little features that most things don't have in terms of just the way they lay things out in the browser. I don't know, have either of you used it or if for any amount of time no uh and i am aware of it but i'm just so entrenched in safari and you know the way things tie in with touch id and stuff like that but just from that announcement of the no no ai features planned that alone has inspired me to look at it as some sort of alternative or thing to meddle with like i was impressed that they made that kind of statement it's incredibly customizable like when you go to the settings of this and you say like show me all the settings, it's like, holy crap, this is overwhelming in terms of how many settings there are. As a default out of the box, it's probably fine for most people. But I also appreciate the fact that they kind of like let you do as little or as much as you want to kind of customize, which is cool. And you know, like, if you don't want to customize, it doesn't mean it's a bad experience for you. But also, if you do want to customize, you can go nuts and like, put tabs on the left, on the right, on the top, on the bottom. Like you can do all kinds of crazy stuff, which is nice. But again, you don't have to do any of it. And also the sync is very good in terms of like mobile to desktop or between desktops, everything syncs really nicely. So yeah, it's a very solid browser so far for me. Again, 17 days. I had used Arc for probably four years or something. So a little bit of an adjustment in that respect. But I like it so far. I gave up on it again. I was using it for a few weeks and I just two days ago gave up on it. Mainly because I was having all sorts of problems with the 1Password extension. Like it would not reliably unlock. I've not had that. I don't know. It's probably the fault of 1Password to be perfectly honest. I think you have to, and I'm going completely off script here. I think you have to do... There's something special you have to do to allow one password to go into Vivaldi or the other way around. There's something you have to do there to like what. Yeah, I think I know what you're talking about. I think I did that with the CLI maybe. I don't know. There's something there you had to do though. It was, yeah. And I thought I'd done all the things and it was very annoying and it wouldn't work properly. That's too bad. Ironically, the only one I was able to get to work reliably a couple of days ago was Safari with one password, which is ironic because I'm pretty sure I went to Vivaldi a while ago because the 1Password in Safari wasn't working well. Yeah. So I'm probably going to say it's a 1Password thing. Do you both use 1Password? Not for years, no. I use iCloud Keychain. iCloud Keychain, okay. I need it on Windows and everything, and it's just much easier. Got it. In that regard, except for when it doesn't work in the browser. It's great. It's just when it doesn't work. It's one job. Yeah, okay. But Vivaldi is kind of cool, but it's a little weird. It might become my dedicated hemispheric views browser. There you go. How about that? Like, I'll open Vivaldi to do the notes. Vivaldi. You know. Is that how I said it? It's Chromium. It's Chromium based, Martin. So, you can actually get Chrome off your computer, which would be a good thing. Yeah, that would be a plus. All right. The only thing that you've been running for a day longer than Vivaldi, Jason, is your MacBook Air. Correct. Yeah, that was day. I figured new computer, new browser, right? Really was because of the side. The way that Arc does side tabs is great on a larger-ish monitor. But if you're on a 13-inch monitor, like I said before, websites get weird and like start falling off the edge of the screen. it's very strange this is like i guess i need like top tabs maybe which oh top tabs are just the worst i don't know how i i forgot how terrible tabs are on the top but that's a different different show probably but yes the macbook air 2025 version m4 10 cores 10 cores whatever the hell i got absolutely incredible what a delight of a tiny thin light quiet machine i would probably say probably regret this but it's a perfect computer just for doing computery things yeah yeah it's it's it's incredibly powerful absolutely silent light is all hell doesn't have fans doesn't it's got enough ports screen is fine i was worried about the screen because i was going from the fancy you know whatever uh what is it pro motion blah blah blah you know what it doesn't matter it's incredible it looks great also how are lcds so thin now have you ever looked at your laptop screen what it's like three pieces of paper thick what the hell's going on there how do they even do that uh great computer absolutely would recommend i did get the like top spec so i can't speak if you got like eight gigs of ram i don't know maybe that's bad i don't know but 32 has been fine so far compared to my old computer i don't even notice that it's different other than that i've like could leave this thing in a pants pocket and forget about it it's so small pants pockets if my pants pockets were really big but yeah it's just a if i if somebody asked me like what computer do i get i want to get a mac like get this just get this one and just stop even asking about it the 14 inch macbook pro why like i don't even why bother i don't understand why you'd even get that hey i got that one yeah i got the pro oh yeah that one's that one's good too. That's a good choice too. Thanks Jason. That's cool. Good save. I thought you had an air. Damn it. I like my pro motion display and my good sounding speakers. Yeah, absolutely. Take that. Yeah, for sure. Damn it. Well, congratulations on that Jason. And look, our next topic I wouldn't be surprised if we have a male listener. That's pretty expected. But it turns out when you flip it, we have listener male. Oh. This is very exciting. Male listeners are pretty typical, but listener male is less typical. Yeah. Listener male is very, very far and few between. And it should be way more often. Hint, hint. Yeah. Remember putting the burden on new listeners. This listener male was even more special because it wasn't electronic male, was it? It wasn't. It was mail of the snail variety It was analog mail I think it cost like $15 to send it Snail mail from a male listener And where did it get sent? From a male snail From a male, okay And to which of us did it get sent? It certainly didn't get sent to me Oh, it didn't? Analyst No, no Oh, weird It's analog, so it can only go to one place Did it go to me? I think it did I sent you both a PDF of this I scanned it. So you have a copy. Yeah, which is probably sacrilegious to the person who sent it, but that's how we're reading it. Yeah, I opened it, I scanned it, and then I burned the original letter because who needs that? No, we got a letter here from, you wouldn't know, it's not actually signed technically. Oh, yes, it is. My bad. Yes, it is. My bad. It's got a big sticker on the top corner. that looks like a R and a K, probably. It says, to my right, honorable colleagues. And I was like, wait, is this from work? Is this a work thing? I shouldn't be reading this right now. It's certainly like Commonwealth language. It appealed to Andrew and me. I'm sure you can tell. Yeah, you both were like giddy when you read that. You're like, oh, yes, speaking our language. Oh, yeah. Did the envelope have O-H-M-S written on it? I hope this letter finds you well and in good health. Eh, close enough. I am writing to suggest topics of which I have three for your internet radio show, which is this. This is what I referred to as the program earlier is, in fact, an internet radio show. First question. We'll do Andrew first. First question. We'll start with you. The first, Analog Tools, and that's spelled A-N-A-L-O-G-U-E. Correct. Hint, hint. Interestingly, Honorable was spelt without a U, so. Incorrect. Not correcting, I just thought it was a fun, I think he's appealing to the North and the South in us. Do you know what I mean? Can't win them all. Can't win them all. Something for Jason, something for us. Do you use pens, pencils, or paper for any activities in your life? Question mark. Yes. I can answer that right now. Yes, I do. And I've been trying to use them more, although I still struggle. At work, I use a biro most of the time. I also use a Mitsubishi pencil. What's a biro? Or should I say Mitsubishi, not to be confused with a car company. No, not a car. I also have in my home environment. His hands are huge, B. He doesn't use a car as a pencil. You should see how massive these pens are that he has to have custom orders to put his hand. It's like a telephone pole. It's crazy. In my hand, I have a... Shut up. I'm talking about my pencils. I have a Sharpie S-Gel. An S-Gel. Black ink. Okay. I'm a fan. And at home, I have, courtesy of friend of the show, Johnny Desmall, I have the Blackwing Pearl as a pencil option in my home, which I do not let any of the children use. Jason also has a Sharpie, which he is holding up. I don't know if this is an S-gel, though. The Sharpie show. Is this an S-gel? Is this what yours looks like? No, that just says pen. It just says pen. If it says pen, therefore it is a Sharpie pen. You'll see on mine it is a Sharpie S-gel. Oh, it's an S-gel. Okay. A Segel. Which means it is S-gel. See the difference? Pen versus S-gel. It means they are two different things. It's like a Steven Segel, but it's a Sharpie Segel. and 0.7 the only true measure of a s gel oh boy we're gonna get into that now okay all right i am done um that is what i use i am done martin and i am using i've recently been using shout out he said he was date remember when he said he was done and then he was like kept going he's still going he's still going yeah he's still going date david shay's emergent task planner Originally designed in 2004 I think I have attempted to use it a few times over my years Recently at work Been doing it again Never goes out of style The emergent task planner A daily paper-based time-blocking system Andrew, are you the John Farnham of this show? Like you say, it's the last time where you're finished And then you keep coming back You're the voice trying to understand it Over to Martin To make it real Martin, sing Sing it with me now Martin, same question No Moving on Oh wait, I guess I should answer Yeah, you should He uses a Sharpie pen I've got a Feld notes As it should be So I got one of those I don't know anything about it It's this one It's black Black, it's durable materials, 48 pages. And then I've got a mini Pilot G2. Very good. Are you happy with that combo? Can you hear me clicking it? No, you can't hear it? Okay, well, maybe it'll be on the recording. I have a National Park series. Oh, there you go. Feldnotes. Every time I get a Feldnotes email, I think it's felt notes every single time. I should capitalize on that. And I will just, I should expand because I was very curt with my no answer because people are going to think that I hate analog tools. I don't. I love the act of writing. Like, that was actually, I loved handwriting, like, at school. But every time it came to something like keeping a diary, I don't know if this was a thing for you, Andrew or Jason, but, like, the school would issue you a diary, right? To me, once I wrote in that diary, it was dead to me. Like, I love the act of writing, like if it was long notes or an essay, like I loved English at high school, all that stuff. But as a way of actually keeping track of information in my personal life, it's just, if I receive a letter, it's basically like lost to me. If I receive paper, I'm just, I've never been very good at caring to keep it. I don't like the cruft that builds up in reality. So, I've always, although I love the idea of slowing down with analog tools, it just never really seems to fit in my life. So that's not to insult everyone listening. It's just not what I do. So it's good that I scanned this letter and sent it to you digitally. Yes, very much appreciated. Whereas I will frame this and it will live for the next 200 years. Good on you. Yeah. Okay. Second topic. Topic the second. What items make a perfect festival meal for you? Was that festive? What did I say? Festival. Same thing. For me, a meal without pigs and blankets is barely a meal, period. That is rather British, isn't it? We'll go Martin this time first. Let's switch it up. Yeah, look, I mean, I'll embrace traditional Christmas, or I assume that's what this person is suggesting. RK. Traditional things, fresher things, even vegetarian things. I'll take whatever at Christmas time or during the festivities. But what I do particularly love is barbecued stuff. So, my mum in particular does beautiful barbecued lamb or something like lamb shoulder. So, just that kind of soft on the barbecue, summer's day lamb lunch is just fantastic. I'm a big fan of that. I feel like Australian Christmases should involve a barbecue in some way, even if it's only one meal component. Otherwise, why is it summer? It's not summer though, it's winter. It is for us. I say I want cold ham. Cold ham. Okay. Yeah. Cranberry sauce would be nice with that. Okay. I know cranberry sauce is often a turkey thing, but I don't really like turkey, but I do like cranberry sauce. And I want some room temperature potato salad. Temperature to? Slightly colder than room temperature, maybe. Okay. A few C under, as they say? I feel like room temperature is very confusing for everyone listening in the Northern Hemisphere, Because they're thinking, so it's a summer's day. It's probably 30 degrees outside. That's a hot room. So, you want it slightly colder than sweaty. You want hot potato salad. So, you've got it. You've had it in the fridge. And then you bring it out an hour before. It's been resting. So, so far, no pigs in blankets for either of you, it sounds like. No, no. That is a sausage in pastry, isn't it? Yeah. Basically. As far as I know. Yeah. Yep. It's too hot for that. Too hot. Yeah. Oh, I wouldn't mind. I like a prawn as well. A cold prawn Where would you cook that prawn? You don't cook it Well, at least you do cook it Because they have to be cooked I hope you cook it Do you want a room temperature prawn as well? No, you're cooking them You're cooking them You buy them pre-cooked, basically Give it to me Come on, just give it to me Where do you cook? I'm not cooking on the barbie, okay? There it is Hey That's the first time in the entire year. You got to do at least one a year. Come on. Throw another shrimp on the barbie. There we go. But we don't call it a shrimp. It's a prawn. Paul Hogan would be proud. It's a prawn. That's okay. Yeah, open sauce prawn. Open sauce prawn. Oh, that was great. Festive meal. Yeah, I think just the classics for me. When I think festive meal, I immediately think Thanksgiving or Christmas meal. Ham, turkey, cranberry, not hot potato salad like Andrew. That's a Wiggles thing, really. That's where he's getting that from. Green bean casserole, probably one of my top faves of all time. And stuffing. So there you go. Yeah, it's funny. You have the Thanksgiving thing to throw in because Thanksgiving comes around and I see it light up all my feeds. And I'm like, I don't know what I'm looking at. And everyone's like, it's so important. I'm going, I just know that we keep getting more American versions of sales here that revolve around something that we don't do. I'm so confused. Yeah, it's just tasty food, really. Okay, third question in the letter we have. Finally, when was the last time you sent a letter to someone? Question mark. Andrew. Gosh, I can't remember. I sent a birthday card to my mom just the other day. Oh, that's lovely. Did you write it by hand? Yeah. Well, I bought the card and were in it. Sure. Was it with your 0.7 pen? With my pen. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Martin? Yeah. I'm sure it must have been the case at least once, but I don't actually ever remember writing a letter to anyone in my life. A physical letter. I don't think I have. Or at least I don't remember it. There is no way that's true. You. You have not written like a eight page front and back, like full giant letter that took extra postage because it was so heavy. No, I mean, you're kind of describing the length of my high school certificate year 12 English essays, but I don't recall. Did you send that to anyone? I mean, to the marker. It was bundled up and they got to enjoy. You've never written a letter to the editor just expressing your outrage? Look, maybe it's just so long ago in my childhood that I don't remember. I'm sure there was like a letter to Santa or some far off relative or something. But I actually don't remember writing a letter. Really? And posting it to someone. Dear Santa, I kindly request that you improve your performance. That would be Martin's. No, that's you. You're about the lean crap. Not me. Anyway, that's the thing. I grew up in a time when people did send letters like it was a thing. I know what it is. I'm not like some post Gen Z person. I understand what a letter is. But I just don't think I've ever had the need to send one. And anytime that one has arrived, I've gone, can I please change that to an email? So I don't think so. I can't remember. Kind regards, the Right Honorable Rob Toobies, ambassador for, you guessed it, the United Kingdom. It's really important. It's really quite a privilege that we've received this letter. So thank you, the Right Honourable Rob Toobies. It's good to hear from the ambassadors from time to time. It is. It is. We like to hear from the colonies and see how they're going. We're the colonies. It's the only way we can understand what's going on around the world is by written letter at this point. He's from the motherland, although I, ugh, to say that. Sorry, nothing against the UK, Rob. Oh boy. Here we go. Yeah, let's fast forward to that republic, shall we? Shots fired. Next topic. no they can do what they're doing i just it's a bit of an anachronism for us well much appreciated if anybody wants to send us uh mail i will uh well i won't if you have my address go ahead and send it i'm not going to publicly share that but send it to jason because i'll lose it i will lose it you could you could hand write it scan it and email it to us that would be fine if you don't have someone's address that would acceptable so please do hello at hemispheric views.com fresh off the icloud train so it should work should get to it did i did i move that i don't i don't recall receiving anything so send me a letter i'll lose it send me an email i won't get it i'll look into that i will look into that um we've got two more topics quick quick topics here um rapid fire let's go rapid fire rapid fire 2025 wrap-up yep um first topic i was hopeful that either of you or both maybe we could get two different you know coastal interpretations here oh um what the f**k is an arvo and what does that mean and why is it called that well you're saying it wrong it's not an arvo yeah the the Non-rotic R. Here we go. It's an R though. Is this where I just hang up now? So I don't know about, I've got new, I would call it an erotic R. Erotic R. Okay. R. I don't know why I said that. You just said neurotic. Is it neurotic R? Non-rotic. Oh, non-rotic. We use a non-rotic R. Jason uses erotic R. I use erotic R's. Erotic R he uses. Yeah, he does. Very often. Yes, yes. Oh, gosh. Sorry, avo. Avo? Avo. Avo. No, that's an avocado. Like an avo. Avo is an avocado. Correct. Avo. Which is, by the way, for anyone listening, yes, he said the same thing twice in a row. And an avo is something else entirely. Yes. What's that? How do you say that? That's a criminal situation. That's an initialism. That's when you would say someone's not allowed to be within a certain proximity. But you wouldn't actually say the letters, you'd still say it Or would you say AVO? Oh, you could be issued an AVO on the Arvo But not an Arvo on the Arvo I'm so regretting asking this And if you happen to be holding an Arvo at the same time Yes, yeah, you could be holding an Arvo while being given your AVO on the Arvo Or in the Arvo They're saying the same words for different things This is what's known as Australian trolling for anyone that's listening to get to your answer the arvo it's it's the opposite of the morning which funnily enough we don't abbreviate or contract but like why but why i did like i well it's the afternoon and it's the arvo that's just what it is it's afternoon What about ARVO says afternoon? Afternoon? No. Arvo? No. No. No. Is this can we just agree you made some shit up and everyone agreed to say the same thing and that is where it ends? Kind of like when America decided to change the spelling of all the letters. Sorry, change the spelling of all the words with different letters. Just leave them out, you know, just random, you know. and arvo has a it's just there's a there's a there's a twinge of hope usually arvo is something positive a twinge of hope all right so it's like oh i'm gonna catch i'm gonna catch up with steve the sarvo i'm gonna i'm gonna see i'm gonna have a chat to martin sarvo i'm gonna go to the pub the sarvo no i'm gonna get to that report the sarvo that's i mean you can but it's not the So it's not a one-to-one for afternoon. It is a situational dependent afternoon. Yeah, I think so. I prefer it that way, yes. So what if it was like, I got to go do a really crappy meeting this afternoon? Look, it's not 100% rule, because I'm thinking in a trade-based work environment, you might still say, oh. Even if it sucks, you might still say. I'm doing the tile and the salvo. Okay. Yeah, it's a more casual thing. But would you agree, Andrew, that at work, given that it's not tied to perhaps a meeting schedule or one's projects, you could say, oh, does anyone want something from the servo? The servo? Oh, yeah, that'd be great. Yeah, exactly. So, you just chuck servo in, but to say, oh, can you get that to me by the servo? That feels a little bit, ugh. Wait, servo, that's the gas station. Yeah, the service station. That's right. What does that have to do with arvo? But we don't call it a gas. Get me a Chico roll. Well, no, I'm just saying that you would get a Chico roll from the servo. Oh, fuck. No, I'm just saying you wouldn't say Arvo to your boss, but you might offer to get something from the servo. Servo just feels a little bit more. Oh, yeah, that's fine. That's where you go. Got it. I would say this Arvo for our meeting is a bit informal. Got it. Okay. But yeah, we don't call them gas stations because gas is something that you would have your car converted to use as natural gas. rather than gasoline because we call it petroleum petrol station yeah petrol station okay there it is and you regret asking here we are yeah still makes zero sense but what do you say what do you guys say what's your native like i think it would just be the afternoon i don't think it i don't think there's like a oh it takes so long so boring i know it's like it's so boring you can understand what the hell i'm saying and not have to decipher the sentence americans just you americans you're so frightened to have any fun with the language aren't you i think it's just nice when you can understand it the way you said you americans andrew reminded me do you remember the grim reaper from the end of the meaning of life monty parton's the meaning of life oh yeah you americans you talk and you talk and you say let me tell you something and i just want to say this well you're dead now so shut up Jason's like please don't bring up Monty Python on the podcast Yeah I think we broke him Okay let's wrap up the show Arvo I'm just going to call it Arvo Imagine if I did the Monty Python Grim Reaper situation And trying to do the American accent No I say you Americans No I say you You speak so No No you are not Colonel fucking Sanders sucks that's not a representation of everyone you can't do colonel sanders representation of everyone you're like colonel sanders yosemite sam and then like sling blade like all mixed together is your interpretation of what's going on over here i think that's a good point to wrap up the show i have one more question yeah have any of you either of you rather had a concussion no not that i'm aware of okay have you i just had one recently and it was what it sucked and it was terrible and i was just curious if you had one and if you're king if your concussions went in the other direction from ours i wasn't sure if that was how that worked how did why did we not hear this until now it wasn't that important it's a concussion it's very serious it's fine i just smacked my head against something and here i am it was a shelf yeah a shelf yeah like the corner of a shelf i was stepping and then i i i fell head face first into a shelf and uh concussed myself and it was not good no it's bad i don't recommend it it was it was not great i'm glad you're still here with us that's horrible i feel better now but the first few days was not not great and then now i'm just asking everyone if they've ever had a concussion so i can have concussion discussion with them it's like counter chat but it's concussion discussion yeah connecting with people who've also had serious kind of brain trauma yeah yeah and then after that did you choose your the notes app that we're using for the year straight after that event exactly that's exactly how it happened yeah we can you can work on our jason which of your co-hosts has more compassion for your issues i just threw a dart i threw a dart at vivaldi and was like boom there's our notes app hack hack whatever it's called so are you okay did you go to the did you go to the gp i'm probably fine that's the doctor the gp yeah it's i went to him uh last arvo okay That doesn't work, you can't say last Arvo That doesn't make any sense You can say yesterday Arvo Yesterday Arvo No, that's an avocado, stop it Boy Three Well, thank you listeners for joining us In 2025, we'll catch you next year Hopefully Jason will be alive Oh, this is the Christmas special Is this the last one? Yeah, for the year That's what I said I said the last episode for 2025 and you're like, oh, the last episode ever. I just had a concussion. I didn't know. Fair enough. And to be fair, are we going to have to launch it later than Christmas Day when it's due? Absolutely not. I expect everyone to listen Christmas morning before doing anything else. Okay. Well, Merry Christmas to those who celebrate. Thank you. Can we give it, you know, in true birthday fashion? You have a hippie parade Oh yes For Christmas should we do like a ho ho ho or something? Off you go Ho ho ho Merry Christmas Ho ho ho Alright we're all gonna have a go Andrew that was you first Then me then Jason can be the last one Ho ho Merry Christmas That was scary I don't think I liked that Santa And Andrew still tried to make it sound Like a southern gentleman You just Yeah like Duck Dynasty or something They all have Santa beards don't they? Or Dynasty for American listeners I broke Jason I forgot that existed That's terrible Ho ho ho Is that a good one? It was great You gotta say Merry Christmas Merry Christmas Oh actually and you're in America so you gotta say Happy Holidays um happy holidays can you put some some jingle bells in there do you think uh i'll do my best or just bells any kind of bell would work sure i can so it's like ho ho ho merry christmas that works like that that was a good one as well okay cool um and ho ho ho stop Ho, ho, ho, Merry Christmas! Ho, ho, ho!