030: Take All My 1’s and 0’s

So, welcome back another episode. We made it to 30, man. That's kind of exciting. It's like milestones.

Yeah, I mean, it's a year younger than I am now. Well, we go by episodes compared to years. Yeah, speaking of which, happy belated birthday, you know. I don't mean by the time this post, it'll be a little late, but did you have a good one?

Yeah, man. I had a nice old man birthday where I didn't do anything all day. Well, I went to work. I guess that's an old man birthday for you.

Yeah, you can tell you're in the old man birthdays when you actually got to work. The kids are more excited, you know, that, oh, dad has a birthday. Let's do birthday stuff for dad. So that was nice.

And then, like, dad, where do you want to go dinner? I'm like, let's go get sushi. And I'm like, I wouldn't like sushi. Well, I'm like, okay, well, I'll just take one of you.

And the rest of you can stay here. Is there just one kid that likes to sushi or? There's two that do. So it's actually one that doesn't like it.

For some reason, I don't know. I mean, it changes every day. She likes something one day and then she hates something the next day. All of them are kind of like, finicky like that.

But usually it's a majority that do like it, so we can go. The wife and I especially like it. So we try to go whenever we can like force them to go. We'll go.

But tomorrow is our normal pastry day. So that'll be, that'll be nice. Looking forward to that. Are you into the roles?

Or are you like a, what does it just seem? Does she mean? Yeah, that's like just roughest. I'm very much a role guy.

My wife will do sushi meal day long. So Alex loves it. But I think she ruined me when I first had it because it was just a big piece of salmon and salmon. Oh, salmon, raw salmon.

No, thank you. Like I think some good like tuna. Like I could, I could do. I'm like yellow tail.

Like I can live with that. But salmon, that's too much. Yeah, I don't know. I'm not a fan of roles at all, actually.

I'm much more a fan of the, just the raw fish. Let's just, you know, cut to the chase. So that's, that's definitely my thing. No, I want like flavors.

Like I love rice, you know, so the rice and, you know, it soaks up all the nice soy sauce and wasabi and oh, it's so good. And then you get crab and you get some avocado and you get some of this, you get some of that. You can get kind of like adventurous, right? And I feel like, so she means like, okay, here's a piece of fish.

You know, it's like, yeah, that piece of fish might be good, but really so many directions. You can kind of go with that. But a role it's like, you can kind of get a little bit of everything in there, right? It's like a sandwich.

It's the, it's the Japanese burrito. Very true. Speaking of the, is there a Bertos in the Japanese culture? You just go to any Bertos, like your burrito rant?

Oh, you know, so, so she's kind of funny. Like, there are places that, like I used to go to, like I'm sure you went to like, you know, same places when we lived in the same area. But there's a couple of really good ones, but they're over the hill in, you know, in the valley. So I'm like, I don't want to like, on a Friday night drive over the valley and then drive back, you know, like becoming like the super old man.

Like, I don't want to drive at night, you know, I can take the bus, you know, but I don't want to. So there's, there's one that's really close to our house, which is consistent. And the people are really nice and it's been like family owned for a long time. So we usually just go to that one.

Everyone's super friendly. You know, we've been there enough times where they kind of recognize us when we walk in. So we just go there. I mean, but there's a question that's not a Bertos where I can just go anywhere and it's going to be like good.

You know, it's still still going to do some homework on Yelp just to make sure you're not walking into just subpar sushi. Yeah, it's a little bit different culturally. It's not, it doesn't work quite the same as the, you know, any Mexican food restaurant. It's like you can walk into and it's kind of hard to screw up the food.

You know, I mean, I'm not going to say it's impossible, but it's harder. And I don't, I'm not as trusting with my raw fish. Let's just put it that way. I also feel like, yeah, when you walk into, you know, a Bertos or, you know, insert name of Mexican fast food restaurant here.

You know, I feel like you know what you're getting into. You're not looking for like, a clean plate. You're not looking for something that's going to be, like, good. You're looking for something greasy for something that's fried.

You're looking for some that's going to you know, fuck up your system. And I don't think that might, I don't have that mentality when I'm looking, you know, or feeling sushi, right? Like sushi, I kind of want something like, nice to prepare. i want something that's going to taste good.

I want something that's going to be like feeling, but not super filling, you know. Sooshy fold is very different than Mexican food hole. Yeah, that's that's very true. It's a very different kind of, you know, eating and it's not heavy, you know.

There's a time in a place for Mexican food and there's a time in place for sushi. And the two generally don't mix if you ask me. You never see like that combo, you know, well, no, you haven't. I guess the combo is like Green Burrito, Carl's Jr.

And what's the other one? There's no one too. It's like a KFC and something else. Oh, yeah.

Isn't it KFC? And well, I've seen a KFC, I think in a pizza head or a Taco Bell or Long John's delivery, one of those. But I feel like trying to marry the two types of food where it's like, yeah, we know what we offer and we may or may not use the same oil to fry our shit. You know, like, you know what you want.

And I don't feel like you wouldn't see the Mexican food and the sushi combo place. I feel like that would be a dangerous combination. Like if those two are in the same building, like that's when you turn around and walk the other way. Yeah, that totally makes sense.

I mean, I'm skeptical of all those restaurants. Let's just put that way. And when you got to eat, you got to eat, you know, so if that's the only place around, like go for it, you know, but order cautiously. Order cautiously.

What's the thing that would probably be the freshest? What's the thing that they can't screw up? Can I get a queso dilla, please? Exactly.

Anyway, so let's move on a little bit of news for this week. Nice cast, which is made by Ruby Miba. And I know we didn't really mention them when we talked about our, or we mentioned we didn't talk about a nice cast because we weren't really doing streaming when we recorded our episode about, you know, just in general when we talked a little bit about how the podcast works and it's being sunsetted. So after what's something like 15 years I read, they're putting an end to this.

So you have any thoughts on this item? I think you know the why they're sunsetting this. You definitely know what's causing them to shut this down. Well, I think with any, you know, company and sunsetting something, the last we had was what panic and transmit, right?

You know, transmit had gone so far in iOS and then after that it was like, hey, you know, we're not making enough money on this to really justify these engineers spending all this time and effort on it when they could be working on our other products, you know, which are more successful. So as with anything, I think it's just depends on the market and depends on how well something is selling. But with nice guests in particular, it sounds like as, you know, platforms are moving to 64-bit mandatory, which, let's be honest, we've been heading that way since what, 2000 and what, seven. But we've been going that way for a while, but now with, you know, operating systems being more aggressive with dropping full support for 32-bit apps, it's going to require some rejiggering for these companies that are making software that's kind of lower level, right?

But it's doing more on the kernel level, kind of more investment in the hardware-specific code and getting down into the nitty-gritty, whereas, you know, you have an application that runs on, mostly, you know, dependent on the operations and frameworks, like, cool, you know, whatever. You don't really have to worry too much about making your app compatible because it's not as much of an undertaking as it is when you're writing your own frameworks and your own kernel extensions and things like that. So I can't speak for Roba Miba, but what I can assume is like, hey, nice gas was a product that's been out for a long time. Is that a really low price point, which is really attractive to a lot of people, but the undertaking in which they'd have to get this application up to stuff and then figure out, you know, marketing for upgrade versions, this and that, like, just wasn't worth it for them.

Like, hey, you know what? There are other solutions out there. I think we talked about that a little bit. There aren't a lot of great ones, so people are kind of looking for the next thing, but it just made sense for them to kind of like, say, hey, this is it, we're not gonna do it anymore.

But we kind of talk about this a little bit, you know, it's been a recurring theme, is that everything's moving to more of a service base, right? So, you know, you pay Amazon for a cloud storage, you pay so-and-so for music streaming, like, now you just pay someone else to stream your podcast for you or stream whatever audio you want out to everyone else. So, I think everything is slowly switching to the service base thing, and like I said, for a little bit, if they could have, you know, done just a little bit of work to get it 64-bit and, you know, charge an upgrade price, I'm sure they would have done it, but I'm sure there are some smart people, they're crunching the numbers, and they either want to work on more important things or more exciting things. Yeah, I mean, we kind of talked about this offline admin, but I know that we talked about that they have current apps that they're shipping that are 64-bit that can do this sort of thing, so it kind of, you know, makes sense for them to consider, you know, since setting this while it doesn't, you know, have any issues.

But, you know, there comes a time and a place for everything, and, you know, some companies aren't willing to undertake the time required, I'm sure it would have taken, you know, some, you know, a couple thousand hours of time or something like that to maybe even less than that, I don't know, I mean, 64-bit is probably not that hard, but I'm sure if they were gonna devote the time to it, they would have, you know, wanted to add more features and do all that, and anytime you do a big major update like that, I mean, it was only on like 1.1 point something, so it hadn't been added to a lot in that long length of time that it had been out, so, you know, it probably would have required future.updates, and I think they just were ready to pull the plug on it, but it's kind of sad to see them go, because that's like a staple piece of software for the podcast industry. Yeah, it was a nice thing, and that's why you saw a bunch of articles come out about it, right, because all the podcasts are like, oh my God, like, broken me with their sun setting, nice gas, and what are we gonna use to stream? You know, like, how are we gonna do our things? So, I think, you know, it was loved by a lot of people, and it was built on, you know, an open source, you know, streaming server, so really the only thing that they were packaging was the client front end to write the XML files for the channel, or the broadcast config, and then the kernel extension to reroute the audio, and everything else was open source, so it's like, well, when you think about it, you know, they're not doing that much, but the stuff that they're doing just doesn't justify the price point, because yeah, we talked about, they make other software that will let you, you know, create other kernel extensions and loop back to whatever audio you want, and it sells at a much higher price point than nice gas did where nice gas was very targeted, right?

It was sort of a very specific need. They're kind of like, well, we have a sub application that will do that in 5,000 other things, where that's where we dedicate a lot of our other time, like, why don't we just spend more time doing that, not have to worry about putting this thing in maintenance mode or, you know, continuing to worry if things break, and let's just focus on, you know, the stuff that's going to be more versatile. No, that totally makes sense. Well, I guess we should move on to some follow-up, and I guess, at this moment, it escapes me where this actually, this comment came up, but I think we've talked about before that I listened to the podcast after Adam has edited everything, and I was listening this week, and there's sometimes times during the show where we're going back so fast, you know, between each other, it's back and forth and back and forth, and I missed something, or Skype drops out for half a second, and I just missed that word or whatever.

And I think I missed this line last week, because I totally would have called Adam on it, but Adam said he doesn't want to look under the skirt, and I think of the podcast, I think it was the reference, and I was like, whoa, whoa, this is like a total like a Mewtwo violation right now. Adam's getting all sexual here, so Adam, you throw in some shade your way. Yeah, so the exact quote was, Lou, I always feel like you want to, you know, like look under the skirt of the podcast, because you always wanted to like, peek behind the curtain, so to speak. There's another way of saying peek behind the curtain, and yes, my bad should not have said that, especially in the context of today, and I don't know, I can say that I said it, so there's no going back and saying, I didn't say it, you know, but I said it, and I'm sorry for saying it, and I won't say it again, and I'll say looking under the hood again, but you know, when the hashtag Mewtwo for cars comes out, you know, like Lightning McQueen's going to be this spokesperson, then I'll have to change, you know, my analogy again, it won't be looking under the hood, it'll be something else, because it, I don't know, it's one of the things where I totally appreciate, you know, the movement, and I'm not going to like try to talk myself out of the hole that I've already dug myself into, but I didn't, it was all in fun, but I'm sorry, you took it that way, Lou, and I won't say it again.

It was totally fine, it was just funny, and I definitely had to call you on that, I was like, whoa, up the skirt, wow, we're getting, we're definitely getting, you know, beyond the, you know, we market as explicit, so, you know, it's definitely our rated now. Yeah, I know, I was like, is it as bad as like, our VR episode, or, you know? This is true, we did talk about like, VR porn for quite some time. Yeah, so, but, fair point, called me out, it's nothing I can say.

Fair enough, fair enough. So, pronouncing Wacom, they're Wacom, or Wacom, I don't know how do I say it on them? So, I hate that you put this in here, so I almost crossed it out, because I looked at them like, okay, yes, I remember saying last time, like, why don't we just go to the website and look at it, it's like, whatever. So, I just put a link to their YouTube channel, and go have fun, and listen to the 18 different people pronouncing differently, because fuck, I don't care.

Got it, so, you didn't actually find the way they actually pronounce it, you're just gonna throw it in there. I listened to a video, I watched a video for, you know, about three minutes, scrubbing through different sections, to wait for people to say Wacom, and it was Wacom, or Wacom, or Wacom, and I was like, okay, well, now I'm just getting different accents, because people, you know, all over the place, you know, was in Dusseldorf for a while, and then, yeah, so, basically, you remember the rule we had last time, was like, just let someone else say it, you know, first, and then just kind of emulate their saying, that's probably gonna be the safest bet, so, I'll say Wacom. Okay, fair enough, that's, that's interesting to know, and you said they were in Dusseldorf, so like, I don't know how that changes everything, that's gotta certainly add some complexity to it, because knowing where they're actually, you know, at or their headquarters around the world are, I'm sure that affects it a little bit. Well, yeah, and they're all over, and I just went to the latest videos, because I was like, all right, well, let me look at a product announcement, but other product announcements are all text, you know, no actual, like speaking.

I was like, all right, well, let's look at, you know, a live event, so then you pull up a live event, and it's very curated, and it's, you know, a bunch of engineers collaborating or talking with artists, you know, so then you hear one engineer say it, and you're like, okay, well, that's an engineer saying it, so like, that's, we're getting closer, right? I haven't heard the CEO say it yet, but, like I said, I haven't gone looking that far. And then this engineer says, I'm like, okay, that makes sense, let's put that in the mental, you know, vocabulary list. And then a couple of minutes later, you hear an artist, and they say it, and you're like, mm, they said it different.

Okay, now I'm a little conflicted, like I still take the engineer's weight, you know, their answer has more weight than this artist, but I don't know, I'm getting conflicting answers again. So after about two minutes, I gave up, and I was like, all right, you know what, I'm just gonna say, hey, here's the link to YouTube. I'm gonna stand by the thing where I say welcome. And like I said, just emulate whatever people are saying around you and you're broken.

Fair enough. I think that's probably true. We just got, this is one of those like really awkward, you know, companies that pronunciation-wise, just find a friend, find a friend. If I see this in follow-up next week, I'm not going to even think about answering it.

I'm gonna cross it off, I'm gonna delete it, I'm gonna do everything I can to make that go away. Follow-up on the follow-up? No, that's follow-up on the follow-up on the follow-up. It's like the third time we tried to like answer the question, I feel like- It's like follow-up inception or something.

I feel like that horse, you know, that we're trying to beat, you know, it's long gone. Okay, so moving on a little bit, downloading terms of service. So I just wanted to mention that generally speaking, there's usually there's some sort of a PDF or way to email terms of service to you. More under certain occasions, it's just a link, you know, what's this post on there.

Websites, but if you really want to be the atom at the beach with your Kindle, reading your terms of service, then you know, you might want to start saving those PDFs. I'll start a book club. We can all go on like Wednesdays for an hour and just read together. You'll be the Oprah Winfrey of the Tech world.

This week, kids, my terms of service is Dropbox. Like, all right, so we're all gonna read section three for next week, right? So then we can all talk about section three. And it's gonna get juicy up in here.

It's gonna be the like, and you get a terms of service, and you get a terms of service. No, what would Oprah give away for like terms of service companies? And you get a free month of cloud storage and you get a free month of cloud storage. Oh, dear.

Oh, God, yeah, it would get interesting. You get a year of Adobe Creative Cloud, you know. Yeah, there you go. What's Oprah's terms of service for appearing on her show?

Oh, dear. That's probably something scary. You want to follow up on that one, or do you want to just call that a day? You brought it up.

That's all you, buddy. Since I brought it up, I can just basically say, like I'm going to omit that from follow up. Like that, there will not be follow up. Oprah has terms of service, probably a big page that you signed before you go on the TV show, but hey, let's see why, man.

Yeah, everybody's got a CYA to a certain degree, right? All right, so one thing we did talk about is Vanglory, and their terms of service, which we'll definitely drop a link into the show notes about. But long story short, it definitely seems like they have the right to kind of collect information about devices you're on, their party websites, that you visit to a degree. It seems like they have some way of tracking that a little bit, which I'm assuming is through cookies.

They use social media widgets and other things, too. So they definitely have some information on you. But you, I guess the one thing that I did read, or that Adam you read before we started recording, I think, was that you do have the right to reach out to them to see what sort of information they have on you. So that's kind of nice.

And they do sell it, or they could sell it, I guess, is they have the reserve the right to if they need to. Yeah, so a lot of what they collect is pretty standard metrics, behavioral sections, like how long you use the app, or what tabs you spend on the app, or what games you play, things like that. So you know, kind of help them refine the application in their terms. And then the collection of personal information, which was like your name, your email, and any other information you give them, and basically saying like, hey, if we get bought or sold, or we buy other companies, or we sell information to make the platform better, like that's our right, that's, you know, you give information to us, and we can do whatever we want with it.

But if you want it back, or if you want it all deleted, we'll definitely do that. So it's pretty standard boilerplate for, I guess, just anything that maintains a customer database. Yeah, that's true. To a certain degree, you're always collecting something.

I mean, even if it's just kind of impassing, you're kind of collecting that information. And whether you choose to store it over time, or selectively delete it over time, that's a different story. But I think most companies kind of have this baseline of collecting some basic stuff. Cool, so this week we're gonna talk a little bit about consumption of information.

So we kind of broke this episode up into different types of mediums or content. And I thought we would open up and just talk a little bit about text and articles. And obviously there's an insane amount of content that has been created in articles today. And there's a blog and a news site for everything under the sun.

So Adam, you wanna talk a little bit about how you kind of manage this area of content? Yeah, so when we talked about it in this episode, it was kind of like, hey, how do we consume information? In this day and age, we talk about, you know, like you said, just the sheer amounts of stuff that's out there and all the new stuff that you're following, like how do you kind of manage all of that? And I think that was kind of the thing that I wanted to go for when we talked about this.

So I guess for me, what it breaks down to is kind of different workflows. So I have kind of two separate workflows in which I consume like web articles and any like pseudo-live type things. So I guess what I use for news and kind of current events mostly is Twitter. So I follow a lot of kind of noisy channels in Twitter.

I don't follow too many, but I'll follow things like, you know, the Associated Press and I'll follow a lot of tech, you know, journalists and tech companies, right? Like tech crunches, verges, R-Technica, those types of things. So those are pretty noisy. So there's a lot of things that kind of come out of that.

So my Twitter feed, I used to be kind of a completionist and say like, hey, I always want to read everything. So my Twitter feed, but now it's like, all right, I'll scroll through, you know, the last 10 minutes or the last 30 minutes of things. And if there's something that's breaking, you know, I'll usually hop on Twitter because a lot of people talking about it, but I kind of use that for more like in the moment. So like right now.

So from there, like if there's anything interesting that I see, because everyone's in a while, you know, I'll follow a blog that'll have an article that's a little too long to read that I can't let's say read in the moment right there. So at that point, if it's an article, I'll save it to Insta paper, which is a great app, you know, and that's what I've used for years now, but kind of the standard like read it later type service. So I'll save it to Insta paper or if it's a cool product or something, you know, that it's going to help me in it to do or something like that, I'll send it to things. But that's kind of my my consumption or trying to drink from the fire hose of Twitter.

It's kind of what I do there. I do use Apple news occasionally, like I'll check out, you know, once or twice during the day, like in the morning to see if there's anything like truly breaking. I don't have notifications turned on for like anything. So for me, it's very much whenever I check, I pull information.

I don't like information getting pushed to me. So, and as far as like Twitter lists, like, I don't really use those. I used to use like lists and say like, hey, split out my tech, you know, stuff versus my new stuff versus my life stuff versus my humor stuff, but now I just kind of like have it all in one place and just kind of pick and choose what I want from there. Interesting.

So do you, how often do you end up checking Twitter? Is it a morning and night kind of thing? Or is that like just casually open it throughout the day, scroll to the top and see what I find? Yeah, it's more of a casual.

So I'd say probably three to five times a day. I'm not a heavy Twitter user. And like I said, it's more, it really depends on circumstances. I'd say on average three to five times, once definitely in the morning, maybe once or twice in the middle of the day.

And then, you know, once all the way home. And that's pretty much it. And that'll usually give me caught up to speed with like anything that's happening or, like I said, there's anything breaking. You know, usually I'll see that either the next day or if I see that happening in the moment on Twitter or someone tells me about it, then I'll kind of hop on and go further.

But probably three to five, I'd say. Okay. And are you a Twitter completionist in the sense that you read every tweet? Or are you like a, I'm just gonna go to the top and I'll scroll backwards and see what I find.

And at some point I'm just gonna give up an exit Twitter. Yeah, I already answered that, but yeah. So I was a completionist at one point and it got to the point where like my followers or the people I was following had to be so curated because in the need of like wanting to be a completionist, like you really couldn't follow anything that was noisy. So right.

If I followed even just one, you know, like verge. Like if I followed the verge, like say goodbye to, you know, trying to be a completionist because so many fricking, you know, things that get posted to Twitter from them. And like, I don't, I'm not a bit kind of like re-tweeting the same thing or when people tweet something in the eight hours they tweet the same thing, the same story. Like I understand that because, you know, people like me are drinking from a fire hose and they may miss things, but I hate seeing the same article twice from the same company.

So I just follow a lot of noisy channels now and, you know, I'll live with that, but there's no way I could even be close to a completionist anymore. Yeah, I'm kind of in the same boat there with Twitter. I do use Twitter for news myself too, but I also use a third party app called Newsify, which is essentially just like an RSS reader that is just going ahead and it's, I guess the best way to describe it, if you're not that familiar with RSS is it's scraping websites that you choose to follow with a, you know, it grabs the text and the whole goal behind it is that it presents it to you in like a newspaper fashion with stories that are big at the top that are new and it does it in a Safari reader-like view. So no ads and just pictures and stuff.

So, Newsify is a subscription, so I pay for that subscription to get it, but I have my stuff within Newsify kind of broken down within what are essentially like links or lists for Twitter, sorry. And so, you know, it's working down in its tech and then into like general news and other categories of cooking and so on and so forth. And the way I kind of break those down is just like a newspaper where we organize, I have business and top news and tech and so on and so forth. There's sports as well.

So that's the way I break it up. It's kind of a very like New York Times version of articles on my phone. Interesting, so I hadn't talked about RSS yet. I don't know if you want to get into RSS and the way I use kind of Twitter and RSS are totally different.

So you kind of glazed over that. So you do check Twitter, you use Twitter for most of your news, but you're not pulling those same RSS feeds into Newsify, right? Like you're not following the same people in Twitter that you have the RSS in Newsify, correct? Correct, so most of the Twitter stuff that I'm following is simply like I have like one or two like breaking news kind of accounts.

There used to be a really good app called breaking news unfortunately that server shut down and that app and their Twitter account was really solid. I love their Twitter account just because if you really wanted to look at something, you would know exactly what's going on way ahead of something like Newsify where the stuff is delayed. I mean, if there's a major event happening, I'm not really looking for it there. Tweetbot and Twitter in general are something I go to for more like in the moment news in the sense that if I already know something big is happening, I'll check Tweetbot.

I actually kind of go to Tweetbot when I already know something big is happening. Otherwise, I will go to Newsify and just go ahead and pull and see what I get. But there are certain times when news is coming in fast-paced. I can think of a night like the night when I got it was like what four years ago, an hour, five years ago now, but the Osama bin Laden was like captured and killed.

And like there was like a lot kind of going on news-wise that night. And I remember Twitter was like such a great platform to have that night because you could see stuff evolving so, so quickly. Yeah, and I think it's worth mentioning so I mentioned Twitter and I definitely use Tweetbot as well. I use Tweetbot on both the Mac and iOS.

So that's kind of how I manage between the two different devices that I'm using. But yeah, I think Twitter especially or Tweetbot just that whole platform, being able to follow something just in real time and doesn't even have to be something in your followers. Like everyone's small, if I know something's breaking, I'll just follow the hashtag or go to or search for stuff that's relevant to that and you get just a mix of everything. And I guess Twitter is kind of nice for surfacing just a lot of different commentary about things where, I don't know, it's the same with cable news, like you know what it's tuned into whatever you want to.

But it's kind of like Twitter because it is very raw in the moment, right? You only get a certain amount of text and usually includes a link to something. But a lot of times, like Associated Press is kind of where I get a lot of my breaking stuff. They'll be like, hey, this is happening.

Most recently, right with the Parkland shootings, I was following that on Twitter, like I hit that, just kind of when I checked Twitter in the afternoon and then you start following, checking, looking at different sources once you kind of realize that's what's happening. So that was really kind of the breaking and following for me, that's the most recent example, right? What was that event? So it's great for that.

I think a lot of people have kind of moved over to having Twitter be their main source of breaking news because you can, like I said, almost choose what you want to hear about. And that's a good and bad thing, right? Like you can surround yourself with a bunch of varied ideas or varied beliefs. Or you can find that one dark section of the internet that you really want to go to and just get only that viewpoint.

So I don't want to get too much into that because I think that'll take us down a rabbit hole. We don't really want to go down. But it sounds like, yeah, Twitter for breaking news and then tell me more about news if I see you mentioned, it's like a newspaper. So that's all powered by RSS, right?

Yeah. So that's all powered by RSS. And so you can, of course, just drop in your own RSS stuff or they kind of categories of big name sites automatically that you can just find within the app. Is it kind of like flip forward and remember flip forward?

It's similar to flip forward. I mean, there's tons and tons of these type of apps that just are RSS readers. But it's a little less tiled in that way that it looks very much more like a newspaper would be, if you ask me. It looks like something like if you just snap shot at the front page or like a PDF scan of the New York Times or something.

And so I'll drop a link to their website in. But it is something that, to get the scraped content you do at the pay for it, but it is something that I like a lot. And it's something that I really, my routine with me is very much like a open it in the morning, open it in the evening, spend five or 10 minutes just kind of perusing and reading the stories that I want to read. And if it doesn't excite me, then I'm not going to read it.

But it's a very much a check-in in the morning and a check-in in the evening. Tweetbot and Twitter is the more like in the moment, I know something big's happening. But it's my morning download of that information. So I'm looking at their kind of like app web page, their app product page.

And I can see it like you said, like a newspaper. So they do kind of like try to make it pretty with articles and pictures and kind of surface of what you want to see. So you use RSS very different than I do. So that's interesting to see.

But I'm curious because before we get into that to my RSS, do you do any form of like read it later in your like Twitter or in your newsify, you know, workflows? Do you have like a separate service or pay up on a save this for later or you just use it in the app like you'll save a newsifier, you'll save or favor a tweet or something like that? Not really. I do use Safari reading lists, but that is a very like trivial version of that, right?

And it's that list at any time is not more than like five articles long, you know? And a lot of times it'll sit there with five articles in it for two weeks and then I'll be like, oh, hey, I need to read these and I'll read them and believe them. So it's not something that I would say I use on a daily basis at all. Okay.

So yeah, so I mentioned you use RSS very, very differently than I do. So my RSS is I think I only limit it to maybe at the most 15 different RSS feeds. That's it. So my RSS is kind of like sacred to me where that's like, that's stuff that I know I want to see all of.

I don't want to like browse through it. Like I'll probably want to see every article and at least skim it or at least, you know, peruse through it. And that's something I only check once a week. So my RSS feeds I'll follow, you know, blogs are people that, you know, I know personally or people that I know will, you know, write insightful kind of like long form blog posts.

And that's kind of where I go through once a weekend, just peruse through that. So my RSS is very, very limited. And I'd say where I spend most of my time actually consuming media is RSS is still just a conduit for me and so is Twitter, right? This is all just kind of funneling down into Instapaper for me.

So I use Twitter and I, you know, if I see something that I like, oh, I'll send that, you know, to Instapaper if it's more of a longer form type of reading. I'm going through RSS, like if I'm going through RSS, you know, I try to read everything there. And so I carve out a bunch of time to do it. But if there's something that let's say is really, really long or it's a really article that I'm really interested in, I actually want to spend like more time to look at it rather than like starring it in my RSS reader, which I'll mention right now, I use reader, R-E-E-D-E-R for Mac and iOS.

And I know I mentioned that I think in our, you know, holiday extravaganza lists, right? But that's the RSS client that I use, which is very simple. It's just, it has a folder structure, right? Where I kind of sort into the attack and, you know, general this and that, but there's no pretty format.

It's just like, it's almost like email. It's like, if you open up mail and you have all these emails now with RSS and there was a point in time where I was using actual like Mac OS mail for RSS articles, but that time has long since passed since, you know, these apps came out and had a little more integration with the reader later service. But anyway, so, so most of the stuff that I look at in RSS will go to Instagram and that is kind of where I do all of my long form reading. So from there, I'll read it on Instagram's website or I'll read it on my phone or on the Kindle because I have a really nice way to export stuff to the Kindle.

So that's kind of how I push all of my stuff onto the devices to pull later. So do you, do you, any form of like, like you said, Safari reader or reading list is the only form of read it later that you do? Yeah, pretty much. Like everything else is like I said, like that poll from Newsify and I don't really like quote-unquote bookmark something for the read it later or like, you know, temporary bookmark, whatever you wanna call that.

Gotcha. You don't do like speed reading or anything do you? No, I don't do speed reading. I did do for a while, I use the, there's an app called Voice Dream Reader and he also makes an app called Voice Dream Writer.

And one thing I learned in college was that I have a little bit of a learning deficiency and that I'm a very verbal or auditory learner. So everything I kind of, you know, learn best by is all in that auditory realm. So speed reading is kind of stuff for me, even like single word and stuff like that. And so Voice Dream Reader basically has a, a action extension on iOS for Safari where it basically kind of launches the app, grabs all the text from the page and drops it in there.

And then they have really, really high-end speak content voices essentially that are from, kind of what's the name of that company? And I'm probably not nuanced yet. And so, you know, they have like voice packs that they've bundled in and it does some stuff that is similar to speed reading where it like highlights the word and the line that it's on as it's, you know, reading the article to if you're looking at the phone, but a lot of times I'm not even looking at the phone when I would do that. So I would do stuff like that before, but I don't really, I'm not very religious with that stuff.

And most of the time when I'm putting something in there to have it read to me later, there's super long articles. There's been some articles on like, like, like 4chan or something like that that were like essentially, the time to read the article is like 25 minutes or something like that, you know, and that's with it reading at like three or 300 words a minute or something. And I'm not sure if it does that for you, but reader doesn't for me. So reader, I kind of just see the article and like I said, very simple, just RSS.

And then if I see this going to be a long read, I'll usually send it to Instabaper and then Instabaper, since that's where I'll consume most of it, I'll kind of, you know, go throughout the day and look and tack and say, okay, well, I've got like 10 minutes, where's a good 10 minute read, you know? And most of the stuff I put in there isn't time sensitive, right? So it's, some of it is reviews, right? Like when there are reviews of products or, you know, software things and things of that nature.

But most of the other stuff is kind of like an op-ed piece on something else or it's, you know, more an opinion piece on another topic. So it's not time sensitive for me. So I really like being able to send stuff to Instabaper and then have it kind of give me how long that read's going to be. But I do a lot of my reading, especially Instabaper, on the iPhone is all doing speed reading.

So I kind of just throw on the speed reading mode. And if people haven't, people listening haven't sped read or I don't know what the correct term there is. But if you've never done speed reading before, what it does is, yeah, it does a single word, right? So just splashes the word on the screen as quickly as it can.

And the theory behind that is since your brain is processing the words as an image rather than trying to read ahead in a whole sentence, you're able to read much faster. So you can hit like 400, 600 words per minute because your brain is processing all these images and then kind of stitching them together on the back end, but it lets you do that without getting lost in sentence structure. So I've always found that really interesting. And I definitely go through most of my articles that way, especially like when I'm writing Home on the Bus or just I have time to sit there and stare at a phone.

I just sit there and stare at the phone and watch all these things go by. And that's been kind of a really liberating for me because you do save time. And very much like a smart speed feature in podcasts, which in overcast we'll talk about a little bit later. It's just a way for me to save time and time is money.

And when you're an old man, you run out of time and I want to use my time as wisely as I can. Got it. So is it one of those things where you've gotten also faster over time? I mean, I know you said it's similar to Overcast's smart speed feature, but is it for me with Overcast and with podcasts, I've gotten faster over time.

So I assume kind of the same is true with this. You didn't start at some sort of words. You started at, I don't know, 200 or 300 and worked your way up to 600. Yeah, exactly.

So very much it's training yourself to kind of learn this. Like I'm training myself to learn to write keyboard, and I can't type 150 words a minute. Anything like that, I can barely type 80, you know? Anything like that.

Not even 80 words I had. I was at something ridiculously low when I was taking the typing test. I'll have to look it up. But yeah, you kind of build up to it.

So you start at like the 200 mark and then you kind of quickly move up to 300. And once you get used to it, then yeah, you just keep kind of going up and up. So I think right now I have her between 500, 600 in that range. But 400 was kind of like, that's when everything passed 400 just feels really fast.

300 to 400 was kind of like a bigger jump for me. And then 400, 500, 600 is like, okay, whatever. It's all fast, you know? But I think you guys seeing how much time you saved and it's not adaptive, the one thing that they do do is for longer words, they'll keep those on the screen longer, right?

So if there's a really long word or hyphenated words, they'll keep those on the screen a little longer just so your brain can actually catch the whole thing before it disappears. But I used to use another app called ReadQuick. And that was a paid app. And I bought that app a long time ago.

And then when Instapaper kind of, you know, gave all their pro features away for free because Instapaper used only to read a couple of articles. But now that they have, you know, everyone has the pro Instapaper, or at least everyone that bought it, I believe, then I just needed everything there. Kind of eliminates one more app I had to use to be able to read things. But I'm sorry, I kind of went off on a tangent there.

But yeah, speed reading, build it up. It's everything is, you know, kind of working up to getting as fast as you can, same with podcast. Got it, that's cool. I don't know, I would have to give it a try and see how could I am at it.

I would probably suck. I'm not exactly a great reader. Most of the reading I do, and once I learned that this is how I learned, it was monumental for me because I really struggled a lot in college and kind of in late in high school as reading got heavy. I definitely wasn't as strong with grades.

And so I had to adapt. And that's when I kind of learned that, well, this is interesting. And they put you through like all these really weird tests if you've ever done one of these learning disability tests. But basically, you know, it's all this like memorization.

Like do you memorize visually or auditory or what do you do? And I found out that I'm like somewhere in the next, like near top 10% of the nation and for like auditory memory, but like the bottom like 40% of the nation for visual memory. So I probably wouldn't do too good. Too well.

Yeah, there you go. There you go. There's my English. I math better than my English.

I can math good. I can math decently well. A lot of calculus in college. So what can you say?

French numbers, Lou. French them. French them hard. So do you have anything else to add as it relates to text before we move on to another medium?

No, I think that's pretty good. I mean, I will say this is like the Kindle, right? That's kind of a recent addition to my workflow is, you know, I would save everything to instant paper. And then now I've kind of started sending stuff to the Kindle because when you're out and about, like the Kindle is much nicer to read.

Like if you've ever been out in the sun and tried to read anything on your phone, like, yeah, just good luck. Phone starts getting really hot because screen is on max brightness and the sun's reflecting everything. So I have a Kindle paper white, the last or the latest generation that they have and instant paper has this really, or I forgot where I set it up. I think I set it up in instant paper.

But yeah, instant paper has this feature where you can send to your Kindle email and it will get added there. So that's another thing that if I see something's gonna be, like you mentioned, like a 20 minute read or a 24 minute read, also that's a Kindle. Cause I'm like, you know what? That's gonna be the better place for me to actually read something, be able to stop and bookmark and do what I want and kind of pick back up and read in like an outdoor setting too, right?

That's the best thing is like, hey, let's go somewhere. You know, let's go to the beach or whatever. Like go all take the Kindle and I'll sit there and read on it. We're planning to go on vacation soon.

So I'm definitely gonna load up a bunch of stuff on the Kindle so I can read it, you know, while I'm relaxing. Got it, very cool. And the next part about the Kindle is, you know, it's one of the few devices in today's day and age that while you can get the Kindle's with like what 3G and apps and everything today, but like the standard like basic, you know, Kindle is something that is only, you know, I mean, it's Wi-Fi, but it's an offline device for the most part, right? Yeah, there's not really any distraction.

So the one I got is the Wi-Fi only model. Like I didn't get the one with 3G. So it's Wi-Fi only and, you know, I turned off all of the kind of like store features. Like I just want to see the content that I want to see.

Like I don't want to have a shopping experience on my Kindle, right? Like I have the web for that. And if I'm picking this device up and I think the point that you're trying to get to is like I want to focus just on the content. I don't want to be distracted by anything else.

Whereas with the phone, you know, with apps and Wi-Fi and notifications and everything, we can easily get pulled away from something. Whereas if I'm gonna read a 24, you know, mid article or if I'm gonna have a 24 minute read, like, I want to use those 24 minutes. So I don't want to be interrupted by anything. And granted, there's all sorts of external stimuli, right?

Like I have a watch that could go off or the phone could ring, you know, but there's nothing on the screen pulling me away from that. It's kind of a more conscious decision to move away if something pulls my attention. But yeah, I mean, I definitely enjoy the Kindle for the longer reads for all of those reasons. Yeah, it's definitely a unique device.

And one that it definitely has its place, which is what's cool, nothing really else. And I feel like in our society is kind of taking its place because everything else is once you go past the Kindle, it's like it's connected. It's got multiple types of connections and, you know, notifications and all sorts of crap coming in. So it makes it a lot harder to really get through content.

But anyway, let's go ahead and set text and articles aside a little bit and move on to the medium of podcasts, which we already talked a little bit about. So Adam, do you want to kind of segue us in here and tell us a little bit about your workflow? And I think everybody knows at this point, we both use overcast. But what does your workflow look like when it comes to podcasts?

Yeah, so as far as my workflow, my workflow is kind of, you know, app independent. So it doesn't really need an app where I don't rely on, let's say, overcast kind of on my workflow. But the way I treat podcasts is it's kind of much more on that whole type of setting, right? So I'll subscribe to a pretty large number of podcasts.

And most of the time, what happens with those is I'll say, hey, keep the last 10 unplayed episodes, unless I know it's one that is like a sneezing or episodic, you know, like a, if you ever listen to serial or like hardcore history, where you kind of have to have, you know, a decent back catalog or, you know, you have to listen to episodes in certain orders. So usually what I'll do is I'll subscribe to a bunch of different podcasts. I think I have probably, you know, close to 50 different podcasts that I'm subscribed to. And from there, what I do is I sort of into stations.

So I'll put, you know, all of the stations by genre. So I'll be like, okay, these are all my tech ones. Very much like my RSS kind of workflow. So I have my tech ones, I have my life ones, I have my humor ones, I have my news ones, I have my TLDR ones, I kind of have a whole bunch of different stations.

So in these stations is kind of where I go. And those stations I just sort by the oldest podcast or the oldest episode to the newest episode. So really those lists are just sorted by, hey, here's all this stuff in the genre, pick up wherever you want to go. So that's kind of how I just generally categorize everything.

There are some stations that I have that are kind of like my muscleist and stations, right? So the only one station, there's only one that is this muscleist and it's the news one. And usually that's just like news bites. So it's the short little news podcast from, I think I listened to you up first from NPR.

I think the NPR politics podcast is on there. So most of my NPR like short bite content is there. Same thing, I have a couple of other like tech short podcasts just like the headlines that I listen to. And those I can probably get through in on any given day, like maybe 20 to 30 minutes.

That's the longest they are, that's including like some discussions. So usually what I do is I'll kind of listen to that station in the morning on my bus ride, you know, to work and that is kind of getting me caught up for the day because most of the time by the time I get on the bus, all these podcasts have kind of brought up the content for the headlines of the day so far. And then that's the only station that I have to listen to. Other than that, most of the time, I don't drill into a station to listen.

So I don't like go into like a humor, you know, station just like, I want to listen to all my comedy podcasts in one shot. So I don't usually do that. What I do instead is I kind of manually manage a queue. So I'll go kind of like in a section and I'll kind of peruse and it's like, oh, this podcast or this episode looks like it'll be good.

Or oh, I should probably listen to this episode. And what I do is I just manually add them to a queue and I'll add them to the queue. I'll sort them around. And then what I do is I'll download like two or three at a time and then I'll do that like before I go on a walk or before I go home on the bus for the day.

And usually that's how I'll get in like another two hours of listening is just by manually adding, you know, what I want to a queue. So if I want to, you know, I want to listen to something funny and then I kind of want to listen to an educational thing and this and that kind of manually curate my queue from there. Got it. Well, we certainly are very different podcast-wise which I think you and I both knew this already, a little bit to a degree.

But I am definitely the like, you know, try to drink from the firehose of podcasts when it comes to listening. I'm, I was counting up while you were talking here at the number of podcasts that I'm subscribed to right now and it's 48 and on average, most of these podcasts are releasing once a week. And, you know, they vary from anywhere between like five minutes to something like probably like two, three hours, you know. And so there's definitely probably an average of about, I don't know, maybe 45 minutes to an hour per episode.

And so there's a lot of content coming in. So I listen to a lot of podcasts per week and the main way I break it down, although it's changing a little bit and I'm kind of changing to a method that is more similar to you because I just can't sustain the amount of listening and add new podcasts in as well. But how it has worked and up to now is basically I have a must to listen and then I have, if you get time for a playlist and then if I have a two long don't read and then I have the rest of everything essentially and everything drops into a one of those playlists and the must listen is the sort of the more critical one and I always work top to bottom to clear my playlists. So anytime if I'm, if I've cleared, you know, playlists one and two and you know, I'm down in three but something comes into one, I go back to one and listen to that episode first.

And that's kind of the way I choose to attack the podcasts because I definitely want to get through certain episodes right away and other episodes I hold off on. But I do use overcast and I do use smart speed. Personally, I listen now somewhere between probably about 1.7 and 1.8 most of the time. If I happen to be in a car and I have like undivided attention and no one is in the car with me that's gonna hate me, I'll probably go above two.

But that's about it. Yeah, so I also use smart speed and I hover around two. But my smart speed is very much custom per podcast. So I don't really have a global smart speed that I use.

I really fine-tune that based on the podcast. There are some podcasts that, you know, I listen to at two times speed all the time. There are other ones that are kind of more, and I know we mentioned this a couple of times, it's like I listen to like this American life and radio lab and reply all. And those have a very high like production value to them where silences actually are put in there for a reason.

And pacing is put in there for a reason and there's a reason things are arranged the way that they are. So those are usually turn off all these fancy features or at least a smart speed feature. And I might speed it up like one and a half times, but I won't like try to cut silences because that'll change the flow of the actual content. But yeah, I definitely use smart speed.

So I have a question for you though, and this kind of goes to your clearing of playlists from top to bottom is what if there's something you don't want to listen to? Do you just completely delete that or let's say you're not in the mood to listen to it? Do you just remove that completely or do you move it further down in the queue or how do you go about that? So I don't usually give myself an option.

It's a rough life. It is a clear all everything must be played. Go top to bottom kind of idea. And so sometimes I'll be honest, like I zone out more in any podcast because I'm not as interested in the topic or subject matter, but it is something I try to always clear them.

And so that's something I'm having to be more conscious of as I'm switching kind of my listening style to a more do I want to listen to this? Because if I catch myself in those moments, I need to kind of rethink why am I listening to this? And is there something else content-wise that might be better suited for the listening time that I have? But then there are times when I might just be like walking around the house doing laundry, just getting Georgetown or whatever, stuff I've got to get done on around the house.

And sometimes that sort of second track running in my head that is my mind is ahead of the podcast in some ways there where I'm thinking about what I need to do. And that's just background listening is a good thing. So there are ups and downs for that argument for sure. Well, yeah, and I can understand you know, having something as a background track, which I definitely do as well.

But the next question is a kind of follow-up question is do you have limits on your podcast? Like do you say only 10 unplayed episodes, only five unplayed episodes? Or you just say like, give me everything and I will get through everything. Are you like the Twitter completionist for podcasts?

Twitter completionist for podcasts for sure. There is one unplayed episode is a lot at a time, which usually I can get through everything that fast. So it's, but it's a race. Like it's definitely like almost every waking hour is listening to some podcasts.

You know, like I get in the car, I'm listening to a podcast. You know, I'm walking into work, I'm listening to a podcast, walking out of work, I'm listening to a podcast, going to sleep at night, I'm listening to a podcast. In the shower in the morning, I'm listening to a podcast. It's playing on the speaker in the bathroom.

You know, there's always a speaker or a set of headphones that has something playing. It doesn't even sound fun anymore. It doesn't sound fun, but in a lot of ways, like it is something, I have, it's so funny to me because I hated the medium of podcasts. Like I used to hate, because to me podcasts used to sound like talk radio and talk radio was so boring to me.

But I think, you know, in a lot of ways, I was just in the wrong medium. And as I got more and more and more into the right medium that was, you know, something I like, which is in general, most of my podcasts, a good portion of them probably half of the 48 or tech related to varying degrees, some news and some, you know, down in the weeds of coding or something like that. But once I found that, you know, that really started to open that door for me to really like podcast. Yeah, podcasts definitely saved my life because I used to commute when I lived in San Diego.

I used to commute, what was it? It was at least an hour and a half each way every day. So, you know, that was three hours on a good day, maybe four, you know, it's a five hours on a bad day commuting. And podcasts were the thing that got me out of it because yeah, I would just listen to radio.

In radio, it's, you have the morning talk shows, which is all well and good. And then you have to listen to the same commercials over and over again and the bits get kind of stale. But podcasts was kind of a thing, was like, hey, you know what, today I can listen to you, whatever. And then tomorrow I can listen to this.

And if there's a really long episode of whatever, I can, you know, jump to wherever I want to go. So kind of being the master of, you know, almost the satellite radio of basically talk shows, it was very liberating for me. So I can feel you there, but I don't know, I mean, I feel like you're too dedicated to this. And like, there's always this saying, like you have to like go a little bit.

And I can say, I don't know if I forgot to the point where I was forcing myself to be a completionist. I don't think I ever got that way of podcasts. Maybe when I was, you know, following a small number of them. Yeah, great.

But never got to the point where I had so many as like I have to finish these. I just was okay, I was like, okay, well, cool. I'm only going to listen to the most recent ones. And then if they mentioned something that's a really good episode that I should listen to, sure, I'll add it to my queue, right?

Which is kind of one of the glories of having like a manual queue. It's like someone mentioned something like, even like, oh, you should probably listen to this podcast. I just throw it in a queue is like, there's no obligation to subscribe to this podcast, you know, to listen to every episode. It's like, I just pop in, you know, an episode here and there.

But I think having that noise everywhere, like is there ever any downtime for you? Like in terms of, I know, I know podcasts, like we're kind of sticking in this place for a little bit because this is like you said, where you spend a lot of your time. But is there ever any like downtime for podcasts where you just don't listen to podcasts? Cause I know you mentioned like, hey, it's, you know, you're in the shower, you're here, you're there.

Is most of that time taking up my podcast and nothing else? Is there ever any like just dead air or like dead noise? It's rare. I mean, there is definitely times it happens.

And I, it's funny because if I don't hear something playing, I naturally, after, you know, when I realize it, consciously I'm like, oh crap, I'm not listening to something. I probably should be blowing through something right now that way I'm completing something. So there are times, but it's, it's definitely rare and it's probably not like even on a long, long day, there's probably, you know, I'm at home the entire day and I couldn't be listening the entire day. There's probably not more than half hour an hour of time that's not playing some podcast.

Oof, crazy man. You are a dedicated individual. Yeah, I know. It's, it's definitely something that's gotta evolve because there's, there's just too much good content and there's a lot of stuff that I know that I listen to that I could probably easily save, you know, at the current rate that I listen to podcasts, like I would hazard a guess there's probably 40 hours of listening a week at least.

And with 40 hours of listening a week of podcasts, I probably am listening to at least, you know, 10 to 20 hours of content that is just kind of stuff that wouldn't be the end of the world if I didn't listen to. You know, there's probably 10 to 20 hours I really did enjoy and 10 to 20 that it's like, yeah, it could be better and I could have chosen something probably that I would have preferred more. Okay. So anyway, do you have anything else to add to your podcast consumption?

No, I think mine is pretty straightforward, you know, like, I don't know, it goes the same thing where it's like I'm very much more of a poll type of thing. Like I don't feel like there's a push. Like, I guess that's the question is, I don't have any notifications turned on for like new episodes, anything like that. So I'm not notified of, hey, there's a new episode, like even for our podcast, you know, which I have subscribed, you know, I don't get notified that there's a new episode, granted I know when the episode's gonna come out, but I don't have notifications turned on for any of that.

Do you have notifications turned on? Yeah, I do for like three or four podcasts, honestly, it's the ones that are in the muscle listening category. And that's just to remind me of that. Nothing really else.

It's just to say, hey, this is out, you know, go ahead and jump on it and start listening. So yeah, I get maybe three or four notifications a week that's like, you need to actually listen to this. Okay. I try to keep those notifications on lockdown.

What can I say? Yeah, man, I'm kind of having an internal battle because I enabled the WaterMinder notifications again. And I just, I hate it. I hate it.

It tells you so much that app is like, oh. You can customize it too, right? Which I get, and maybe that's what I'll do is I'll just put it to like three times a day. Like, okay, like, tell me how much I want to drink too much too much.

I know, right? I always feel like it's at the worst time too, because it's always like at the top of the hour it's like notification fatigue is a real thing. Like, yeah, it's nasty. I have to find to my WaterMinder stuff, but that's a topic for another day.

So can we stop here for like a quarter second and just ask how many notifications do you honestly get a day if, I mean, because text messages, I'm just gonna say, let's throw those out. Like if you're just other apps, you know, apps in general, if you just left your phone there for the day, how many would you end up with at the end of the day? Throw email out if you get email or phone calls, like that's stuff I'm just, that's like normal. I'm not expecting you to have notifications turned off for some of those.

I mean, like email, I hope you don't have those popping up on your other than your VIPs, maybe on your home screen, but like just, let's take peer apps, third party apps and so on. What kind of notification level do you get a day? Is it more than 10, more than 25? All right, let me, let me at least look, because I have to just look to see kind of like what I would get on average.

So I'm just kind of going through my notifications right now and I'll kind of give them a number as I go along. But, and I'm looking through these and like, nope, nope, definitely don't get any, don't get any, don't get any, don't get any. Yeah, because once I throw like text messages and phone calls out, that really limits it. Like I'll say maybe I'll get like one or two tasks in notifications a day.

Other than that, man, like I'm going through, I'm already down to T and my app's list and I'm like, yeah, like there's nothing. So on average for like actionable apps, I'd say five. Like those are actual like app notifications that I would see on the lock screen. So maybe five to 10, if it's something crazy is happening, but like I said, even if I take text messages out, there's really nothing.

Like my bank, I do have stuff for like deposits on the bank, as well as deliveries, I have those set to notify. But other than that, nope, calendar items. Can I, can I omit calendar or should I count calendar? Yeah, no, I'm a calendar.

I mean, I think those are sort of the like core Apple apps that, you know, on your phone or, you know, that's what everybody has a smartphone for. Okay, like if I get rid of that, then I'm talking like maybe five, maybe. Yeah, you and I are pretty similar here. We got these like notifications on lockdown in.

And there's a few apps that I, so I don't like badges. I keep the badges to zero, but I, but I, I won't let it notify me, but I'll let it badge. And then, you know, that's just the turn to be like, hey, open me, you know, something important happened in here. But yeah, I definitely don't want anything popping up on that lock screen.

Yeah, my lock screen, I have apps to do the, the banners, but I don't have them add to the notification, the lock screen. But the problem with that is like with the watch, they still show up on the watch and they still stay on the watch. So my watch is probably like worse because I have probably a lot of notifications there that would normally be silenced on the phone, but since I have the watch, they kind of persist there. So that's another thing I need to look at another day.

It's one of those things where it's like not that big of a deal because getting the notification on the watch is much less intrusive than getting it on the phone. But, but still, notification audit is probably due at some point in time. I don't think I have a task for it, but I'm sure there will be one created after this podcast. It's like, hey, like do a notification audit and make sure that, you know, clean up all the notifications.

Yeah, it's definitely a thing you need to revisit. And I've gotten better at like, as I installed the apps, like just locking that down early and often instead of having to go back through it all the time and change that. So anyway, we should move on. So we've been through texts and articles, podcasts.

And now I think we come to kind of the, the he myth and this is probably much more in your court, Adam, but video and we'll just say that's, you know, TV and movies. So what does your video workflow mainly look like Adam? I love how you say this is the behemoth, but I'm actually a pretty light TV watcher in terms of, you know, especially following like episodes of TV shows and things like that, but as far as my workflow goes, I have a couple of subscriptions. So we have HBO now that we subscribe to and that one, we kind of can turn off as we want.

Like, hey, we'll turn it on when Game of Thrones comes out and we'll turn it on when Silicon Valley comes out and we'll turn it on when there's some other, you know, good series that comes out. HBO seems to have caught onto that though and they just keep releasing seasons just kind of be around. So I might have to kind of like switch that up a little bit. They're probably getting wise to our act here.

But so I have HBO now, we have Netflix and Amazon Prime. So those are the couple of subscriptions that we have. So from there, most of what I do is I will add what I want to watch to the TV app and the add to up next feature. I'll just use that.

So I'll either use Siri or I'll go to just the search and I'll search for whatever it is and I'll add it to up next. Even if it's something that's not on one of those services, I'll still add it to up next because when it does become available, it bumps it up to the front of the queue and then I can watch it from there. So a lot of what I do is kind of centered now in those three apps and by extension the TV app because I'll just jump in there and I'll watch what I want to watch. And there's a bunch of browse section in the TV which will show you everything from those providers.

So that's kind of been my go to, especially now. So most of the time what I'll do is I'll add something I want to watch to to that queue. And that's kind of almost like my manual queue, right? But it does some smart sorting in terms of when things are available.

And I'll try to watch maybe one movie every two days. Usually I'll turn it on like when I'm cycling now. So I used to listen to music, you know, just to kind of get my blood pumping. And now what I'll do is since I've kind of moved to having a cycle workout and a weight training workout in the same kind of session is I'll spend the 30 to 45 minutes on the cycle of watching a movie and then I'll do my weight training with music.

And then I'll finish watching that movie either that night while I'm in bed or something else, I'll kind of cut it up as I'm, you know, working out. But if there's any like TV shows that I'm watching or I want to watch, you know, like rewatch, same thing. I'll do it when I'm working out and I'll do it from the phone. So most of my consumption is from the iPhone and from the iPad.

We do have an Apple TV, which also kind of ties in with the TV app. And I'll also watch the phone there. But with the kids, you know, once they go to bed, it's it's harder to go out there and watch something. I will say that the Apple TV paired with Bluetooth headphones.

I do have a pair of BIO plays out there, the H6s, I believe. I know H7s because they're the wireless ones. And those are great for watching a TV show on the couch at night. As you kind of get the big screen experience, you kind of get lounge on the couch and you've got headphones on.

So it's all just right there and you can turn up as long as you want. So I mean, to be honest, like, it's pretty simple for me. You know, I just have a couple of subscriptions. I don't do any like cable or anything there.

And I just hate commercials. So these are all the things that kind of give you away from commercials. Interesting. So you use the up next feature a lot.

And you mentioned something about that if you add stuff to up next and it's not available then do you mean like a new season is coming out or something like that? Then it'll put it in your queue when it is available. I don't use the TV app so you're going to have to help me there. Yeah.

So in the TV app, if you add something like, let's say I had a movie that's available to rent in iTunes, right? Or it's on pre-order in iTunes. So let's use Star Wars as an example, right? So I had Star Wars to up next.

So I'm like, hey, you know, add the latest Star Wars to up next. It's like, all right, cool, it's there. So I could always jump into that and I could buy it or I could rent it or I could do whatever. But let's say in six months, right, that it's in my queue to watch.