Hello and welcome to inspect the show about web design and development. My name is Ajay and with me as usual is Hey, hey, you didn't go. I'm good. How you alright?
Yeah, I'm good feeling the heat and it's been quite hot past couple days Yeah, there's room that I'm in I haven't got fan in here Yeah, I've got a heater for winter, but I need to get a fan now for summer So I'll be able to see I'm up in the loft and we've only got what three windows up here Give us a breeze, but yeah, yeah always get something off doesn't it? Need a gadget for a cool. I'll get to that. I'll get to that whole door.
Yes. So we mentioned last episode Obviously, we don't know what the order is of these but it may change but we mentioned last episode that your birthday was coming up And it's obviously coming gone now. So happy birthday for that. Oh, thank you for that and yeah And we decided that we'll talk about some gadgets and what we've got now desks and what we like and wishlist and all that sort of All the good stuff.
So that's what today's episode is going to be about. It's about our setups Yeah, I think that we're looking forward to buying one day and just generally what we're interested in tech boys So split it up into a few different categories You know your actual desk You have a new desk or software you use on databases any sort of gadgets that you that you use them often You know we can leave off things like phones and tablets which are fairly common as well as and Then the podcasting game that we use if there's anything specific might have a fairly simple so I won't have a lot there and then Yeah, I've got this section for like offline tools just physical products that you use stuff like pens and papers and So yeah, if you want to kick it off We can go for the desk and just tell us a little bit about what's on your desk and what you're using okay? Well, I'll put on two desks one at home and the other one in the office. So the office one's fairly Just standard.
I've got a Dell 24 inch monitor and I'm using like a wireless Apple keyboard and Wireless mouse which isn't an Apple one is just like a standard wireless mouse So that's the general setup in the office, but at home I've got more of a set up here seeing that was here before I went into the office So here I've got you know, I'm working off the MacBook Pro which is a late one in 2013 And I've got the other Dell 24 inch one here on the desk and I'm using a An almost on laptop sent a vertical stand. Yeah They're pretty good. It took me a while to Define the one that was gonna like you know look good and fit correctly and you know do what it's meant to do basically So I was gonna go for one of the name But the fully integrated stand which you plug your laptop into and it's like tight keeps the wires all tidy And it's all connected into the hinge that's the one hinge doc. Yeah, but 200 quid Yeah, I thought it's a big investment isn't it?
Especially if you're gonna be moving around a lot you're gonna be plugging in and out a lot eventually those connections are there Where out of the time is quite a hefty bill to replace Yeah, so I decided against that and just went with the standard on what one stand which is pretty good. I like it It's nice and weighty and yeah, you know, it's a snug fit as well. That's the key thing for me I've got a desktop mobile phone charger a wireless one which is pretty handy. Yeah, so they're pretty cool You sleep a phone on it, and it will just you know just charge away I've got wireless desktop LED lamp.
So it's like a touch sensitive desk lamp. It took me a while to find this one You just said you just said a wireless desktop lamp. Yeah. Yeah, it's wireless.
Oh battery powered. Yeah Well, yeah, it's got an onboard one isn't it? And but yeah, it doesn't need to be plugged in by my bike, you know, okay AC adapts it like so and it lasts pretty long as well So it's pretty cool the light that comes off. It's nice and clear and yeah, it's nice stuff.
I've got one of them Also, I've got my desk Sorry, it really no no matter when you think like that. I've got one in the office Which is like a standard office. That's pretty big actually it's massive and everything kind of sits on it Yeah, but yeah, that's generally my sort of like self that I've got here. Okay, yeah fairly similar to mine because yeah I'm also also the Macbook.
So I've got the 2018 Macbook. It's a work is provided by work. So it's fairly recent I've also got the Dell 20 minds of 25 inches to 25 15 h monitor It's a good monitor. I like it.
You know, you can raise it up and down It's it's not 4k, but it's pretty high-def I don't know the exact like scaling of it or anything like that But you know I like the definition of it because then I can have my when I got my chrome in open I can have my death tools open fairly wide Which is how I like to see it almost about third of the screen I can have my death tools open and then the rest of the web pages off to the side and then also with the actual when I'm using VS code I can have a terminal the built-in terminal open over to the side of the other way doesn't take up too much room of the actual Code environment. So yeah, I think it's good size. I wouldn't I'm not that interested in getting a bigger one I definitely don't need a second screen, but this one's kind of like a limit though Is it an IPS IPS? I'll have to check that is yeah, it's the Dell u25 15 h About to try it as a IPS model.
So it's a 2560 by 1440 resolution. So yeah, definitely not 4k. So 2k is good. It's bright It's um Yeah, the bells was fairly minimal stand is quite nice and you know It's got good cable management.
It's got plenty of inputs as well. It's got display port 2 HDMI USB input USB output as well So it's pretty good Well, some of my desk I've got like same as you've got the omeleton vertical stand I've got the double stand so it's got two slots. Okay, the reason for that is Okay, you know, I charge the tablet in there as well. Just stick the tablet in Because I've got my work laptop and I've got my own personal laptop I've got option of slotting them both in there and just swapping out the cable which goes to my monitor so I can run both laptops for one But I've already used other laptop on this desk now that one's normally just that's like the floating one the one that moves around the house And normally stays on the lap.
Yeah So yeah, normally I use the second slot for putting work that I'm currently working on so just put papers in there It's a bit of a letter records or yeah, and then because it is vertical obviously it's closed I've got a single cable coming out which is going to a Thunderbolt 3 dock. It's an iTech Thunderbolt 3 dock some Where the company's from it's iTech dot cz or something like that. So I know what country is cz, you know cz Yeah, I think it is. So that's where it's from check republic.
It's pretty good It's a it's got dual 4k screens or you can run one 5k screen That's what it's all and then it's got like ethernet and USB 3s and all that so everything's plugged into that everything on the desk You know my microphone my webcam USB like cables and stuff like that and then one cable from there into the MacBook So it's really nice. Yeah, it took me a while to choose that one There's quite there's not many on the market that support Thunderbolt 3 and the quite expensive this one is around about 160 Hours of the give us right, but it does a job quite nicely You have to install some dodgy drivers with it. That's how you down So you have to install this thing called display link and that was a bit of work getting that set up And it also causes slight glitch with the Macbook where when you wake the back book after it's gone to sleep The audio balance shifts to one side. Oh, okay So it gets a bit annoying if they're either manually shifted back But I found this I tweeted about it and someone suggested this a little desktop application which Constantly checks if your balance is centered and if it's not it just resenters it so it's clever Yeah, so it just runs in the background It doesn't have an icon in your dock or in your menu bar anything and it's just constantly just polling for your your Audio balance and it just resenters it so it does it like because whenever it goes into sleep It goes off balance.
So every day is you know, re-centering about five six times at least. Yeah. Yeah, so that's really handy Yeah, and then like you you know Apple keyboard wireless keyboard a mouse, but then I have got a mat on my desk I've got a it's called BUBM BUBM case calm. It's like a leather double-sided Leather mat so I've got a blue one.
It's like a navy blue on one side and then like a mustard yellow on the other side And the reason I got that is because my desk I am I built my desk myself I've got a piece of oak Worktop and then sand it down stained it and everything so I just wanted to protect the that surface a little Yeah, so that's the desk I took a nice picture on my desk. I see recently on Instagram. So I'll stick that in the show notes. You should take one of yours Is on and we can put those both in Alright cool Next on the list is you want to go for something next?
I'll keep that for later I suppose you could go over there podcasting it because that's obviously that's all on our desk as well Yeah, so like I'm just well forecasting on the laptop using zoom super called with yourself Otherwise, I'm using the anchor app on my phone Which is pretty cool. It does everything you need to do you can edit within the app as well You can invite other anchor users onto your show directly through the app, which is a really handy feature So I still need to look into anchor and see whether it's worth moving this podcast onto it Because at the moment, you know the way it's been hosted at the moment is the files are on AWS Yeah, and then the website is just a check-all stack site Yeah, which so it's a bit of work because you need to when you're creating your actual XML file the XML feed The very specific thing you have to put in for the episode You need to put in obviously the episode number the title description But they also need to put in the length of the episode in bits Right, so you need to go and look at the file and see how many was the length in bits and then you have to add that in So it's a bit there's a few hoops to jump through if you don't know manually So I will definitely be looking at anchor and take a look at it because you can you can actually download the audio files as well And yeah, you could pull them into your editing software. Yeah by the time this episode is out It might already be on anchor. Who knows?
Yeah, cool. So yeah using that and I've got a road lapel mic somewhere So I bought that last year. I need to find where I put it. I opened it But the desktop one that I've just got hold of is a trust Desktop microphone the mantis.
It's like a gaming and podcasting Microphone is pretty solid USB one Looks good as well. Yeah from what I can see a bit on the video. It looks nice. Yeah, it does the trick and that's right Really, that's my using yeah, it doesn't take much of it to the podcast.
Yes. I've got a blue yeti microphone Which is a USB one as well? It's pretty good. It's I've got it mounted on a on a boom arm So it's raised up of my desk and can push it away from me when I'm not using it The thing I like about this mic is got a headphone output on the mic.
Okay, so so I can hear you know I can get a I can get quite a good representation on my record levels because I'm not processing my audio through anything Right. Well, I'm hearing my headphones is coming directly from the mic But also the mic access sound card so I can hear you as well from the right the same output So it's got volume control on the mic for my headphones and then it's got a record levels control for the actual Input on there as well. It's good I think it's designed with podcasting in mind because it's got a stereo feature as well where you can flip the switch and you can record Left and right channels independently from the front and the back of the mic so you can sort of stand it up in between two people I record two channels. That's pretty cool.
Yeah, you'll get some sound leakage I'm sure you won't be perfect, but you know the floor about that feature. Yeah, which is pretty good and then Speakers, I've got some a Lisa's elevate three speakers on my desk. Yeah, so they were used generally for day-to-day music I use some beats solo wireless headphones Although the wireless I do tend to keep him wired most of the time in my my desk because just there's no point in just using up battery for no reason Just getting plugged in and for editing and For recording we're using zoom for the video chat Which is good because it records it records the call as well and it separates the audio from your side on my side Which is handy and then yeah, we need to experiment with some audio recording So we're also recording independently on both sides and then merging those together later during the edit which is all done in logic I did a little bit of editing for a couple of episodes in GarageBand. Yeah, but the tools in GarageBand are just just a bit limited the main one that's missing is a feature called Script Silence, which is in logic, but not in GarageBand and It basically scans your file scans your order file and it looks for whatever your threshold is It looks for any point that silent in the file and just strips it out But it doesn't move so if it takes out some silence from seconds between three and ten from ten on it It doesn't move that piece of audio than it keeps it where it is.
Right. So for podcasting It's great because any silence that's on my side or any sort of low noises like if I'm breathing or coughing or anything like that It just strips it all out nice. So we should get a nice clean audio Yeah, so that was the reason I use logic and it's pretty good. Yeah, it's fairly quick to edit a podcast with it So I'm happy with it.
So does that lead on to software? Yeah, I think we can hit the software Yeah, let's go through what I'm using. What's in your doc? What are you using every day?
Oh, good Everything everything and anything you want to know that's what everything in the doc can ever move things now But only essentials when the doc and the doc everything else is kind of like they've been up there But not me I find it really frustrating when people have like when you look at colleagues laptops or whatever and they've got all the stock apps Still in the doc the ones that they come through and nothing's been customized and you know, there's tiny dog Which plans the full length of the screen over? Yeah, let's really get it. Let me sort it out for you. Yeah Yes, I've got let me start with the web stuff web development stuff.
So I've got Wish we start with so let's just start with sketch some using the sketch app to do my design work Why frames detailed fun and designs things like that? I'm also using Photoshop But Photoshop's mainly been used for creating web graphics and you know more detailed banners and stuff, you know with which uses Light photography or things like that And I've got a finit designer which I'm using for vector illustrations Which I find better better than sketch when it comes down to manipulating vector graphics It's just so much easier Using the Bayesian curve and those tools within Especially with the latest update How does a finity designer compare to a illustrator? How would you just I said on par? I was a big fan of illustrator.
I was using it for everything Like literally all kinds of design work branding logos and creating icons and stuff and and I just thought myself You know, this is probably the best thing out there for vector for vector design and working with like SVG and things like that But you know I started thinking about you know, I'm just really paying for this tool that I'm not really using as much as I was using Right, so when I first started using I was using a lot and then slowly but surely it was one of these things I could see myself Not been using that much and I was literally opening up a book once a month if that Purely because I was sent an AI file, right? So I needed it to open it But then I looked into a finity designer I got hold of a trial and it handles all file types So it just kind of you know made it easier and you just pay one off fee for it. You don't pay monthly subscription, but balancing The two when you look at them when you're weighing it up. I think illustrators is is the sort of like, you know polished product Whereas affinity is kind of lacking a few you know minor things which would like make it really really good So it's there thereabouts like if you're using You could easily just carry on using affinity and you wouldn't really have any major headaches But you know for someone like you who relies on you know, like your shortcuts and things like that You might get wound up by the fact that affinity probably hasn't got those well I was just like say like I don't use a finity designer, but I've used a finity photo as a replacement for Photoshop That was an initial plan because it's similar to you Once I started using sketch over the past year and a half or so My reliance on photos of just massively dropped and the only time I really open Photoshop now is when I'm trying to access old Design files that I've created in the past always someone sends me something and like you said if I need to Manipulate a photo for some reason like you know see Photoshop for manipulating photos is number one really So then but the cost didn't justify my use so I tried a 50 photos or again is fairly affordable I think it was about 35 pounds when I purchased it for my teens Yeah, and I liked it.
It was good But like you said, you know things like shortcuts I had this workflow that I was so used to with Photoshop I had a few custom people shortcuts out but all the default ones I just had all this like muscle memory from the past 10 years So that I just found it really hard to switch so luckily, you know, I get a Photoshop license to work But I literally only just got first shop from the whole of the crazy installed I don't really use anything else now I just do everything all my vector stuff for my UI work is all done in sketch and I literally use Photoshop just for those a Russell image but I'm gonna playing those But yeah, so it was it's very hard to get away from Photoshop when you've been using it for so long I found it really difficult to make the full switch and really yeah, this thing's that 50 photo didn't have the Photoshop has got Yeah, things like the content aware stuff in Photoshop. I don't think I've been to got that I mean, I haven't really used it in too much recently, so maybe it has but you know It's about time there was a good solid Photoshop Yeah, I did use a finit photo as well and I thought that I can't really make the jump So I kept Photoshop got rid of a illustrator and got an infinite designer Because with a finit designer you can you know do your fun ins and they're as well So it's got all the you know Sound like sketches so you can do both but I'm finding my go-to application for any fun and design and user interface stuff is sketch and everything's done in there So going on from that I'm using envision to do a prototype thing. I've got the craft plug-in for sketch as well I was a brilliant little plug-in to have Then this helps you to you know filling content create duplicate elements and items and things like that It's just a really powerful thing that I think anyone who's so funny because I should have with sketch Yeah, the duplicate content is pretty good for great rows, but have you ever use XD? I have I have used it.
Yeah. Yeah, they're they're grid tool in XD is just amazing And I've just wished that sketch would introduce that because the craft plug-in it does although it creates that repeatable content. It's It's not fully What's the word non-destructable? It's still it creates copies and all virtual copies of the content actual copies Whereas in XD it creates all virtual copies.
So you only have a need to edit the first one and it updates across the whole grid So yeah, if you're listening sketch you need to get on with that and introduce that feature It's like working with instances. It's like it's the same principle as I why can't you just have utilize that? Concept behind it, you know, so you know, I mean so little things like that, but you know then it is a plug-in as well So I'm pretty sure they'll have that figured out soon. Yeah, hopefully yeah, yeah There are a few others that have views as well online software that was really popular actually They probably still is a crime of the name of it, but once I find it we can probably put it in the notes, but Similar to like XD.
Yeah, the main online one is probably Figma. Yeah, there was another one though Totally forgot the name is really good and I was using it for a while I had about five or six projects that I actually designed using it and this is what prototyping built into it as well So I'll find the name of it. Marvel's Marvel's Marvel's Marvel's kind of like an invasion Yeah, Figma is the other really real big player in the market, but I don't really use Figma I've tried it out a little bit, but I just feel a bit strange designing in the browser And I know they've got some desktop apps, but the desktop app is basically just a web page, you know You know rap host just an electron app isn't it? But yeah, quite happy with it.
Yeah, so I think about moving on from the design tools VS code to write all my code Using that I'm very happy with that I mean I had a conversation with a guy that was into being last week and he's still using sublime and when I told him about VS code His mind was blown he never heard of it. Okay, yeah And this guy's a really good developer like he's is what I asked him about his my question thing was what was your setup like you're you're working environment? You're developing a website and he's dropping all the names and everything Gosh, that sounds pretty cool using a gulp and know the things like that and all kinds of stuff I was pretty good. So what do you do your text editing and you say the sublime?
I was like wow you're still using sublime and I showed him VS code and it blew his mind here It's funny cuz I was a sublime user as well Earlier up a couple years ago, and then there was a there's like a point I would say around about two years ago where VS code just got massively overtaken It just I know they just really ramped up their foot or something something must have happened But it's like the whole industry stretched to be a good all of a sudden. Yeah I think it was probably around the time when when VS the visual studio from Mac came out Which is around the same time as all so you could start doing like dot net core on a Mac I think a lot of people at that point started saying okay, you know VS code is sort of the light version of it as well Which which allows you to you know different end work really well and yes, it's a not look back really Yeah, it was your brother who actually told me about it. He's semi-link he was sitting opposite me in the office and he said He said he said look you can sit down look down like this boy So I click the link downloaded it and I've never looked back. Yeah, it's good.
You got yours customized quite a lot or very fairly barebones Yeah, it's fairly customized. I've got like you know got additional themes like I've done odives I've using a completely different style of Theme probably less conventional than most people are using and I've got quite a few little sort of add-ons or plug-ins in there as well So any favorites you think of I think Can't really think of anything that's you know really really you know up there like I do like the bootstrap Plug-in as well that that's a real lifesaver so when you're It all to complete your code basically so when you're putting a class name or you know creating a great or anything like that It will just you know list everything that you're potentially going to choose and it will kind of like you know filling for you So that's pretty powerful thing to use And you could probably do an episode and on all these years code plugins because it's some quite good I've got quite a long list of extensions some of them I just sort of sitting in the background doing something which I don't really realize that I've got them installed But some of them I'm sort of quite actively used them for very specific things Yeah, yeah, one of my favorites I think it's called like autoclose tag And yeah, there's autoclose tag and there's auto rename tags or the same There's not one that does both but yeah It's auto rename tag it basically if you've got like a the save or div with some text inside it And you think okay, no that should really be a paragraph You can just go to the opening tag and just rename div to P and it automatically Renames the closing tag as well nice, which I think so I'm going to do that out of the box But for some reason yes code doesn't and then there's autoclose tag which is as you can imagine It just automatically closes your your your tag when you hit a forward slash. Yeah So they're those two like I although I don't sort of do anything specific to use them They just always running in the background and they're quite essential ones for me Yeah, I think another one that I was using is um I mean, you know this one's like a I don't know how many people actually use this or find it helpful But just a doc type for a HTML document. Oh, yeah, yeah Just just when you're starting a fresh 8th HTML file Yeah, we just put an exclamation mark in it tab Yeah, but that's built in because that's part of Emmett, which is now baked in to VS code That's it.
Yeah, and I remember it wasn't there before when I started using it So I had this extension on there and you got different versions of it as well So you can pull in various different kind of different up tabs. Yeah, yeah different types and different sort of styles Yeah, there's your mobile 5.1 HTML 4 transition one. Yeah, that's pretty handy as I like that one and then you've also got your you know Version control All built into it as well. So that's all connected nicely to To repositories and things like that.
So it's very handy to have all of that, you know in one place Yeah, in terms of the VS code get features. I don't I don't really use it as a get client I am the main time ever use it as if there's conflicts and I use it to as a different tool to fix the merge I just like the way that VS code displays the conflict and code in blue and green It's very easy to pick out the bits that you want to keep them Otherwise that I use our user a source tree for it. Yeah, same here you source free not for myself Sometimes I'm working away in some code or doing something and then I start going through the motions of you know using it Yeah, it happens sometime to time, but I got to remind myself in a minute We've got a source tree running here and that's been in this day for a reason. So, you know all the projects I'm working on That's running on source tree.
So yeah, I got VS code What else was there? I think from a development perspective. I think that's that's all I'm really using I mean I think this morning always is getting myself set up using like a co-kit and I was trying to get golf Running on a little local environment that I've just set up for a new project that I'm working on and it wasn't working for the life of me So I installed co-kit started I got that running pretty quick actually within 15 minutes. I had it up and running but for some reason it wasn't outputting the CSS So I was like trying to find the settings and I'm pretty sure there's some settings there We've got to figure out where you'll build and your build the code goes and everything goes and sorry I haven't haven't used co-kit in a long time.
I use it when it was version two. I think I think it's part of it You know, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, so it's been a couple years since I used it I was using that you know and then just this morning I was like you know, this is just gonna become a bit of a pain I don't really want to be spending hours trying to figure it out So I switched it off and so when I messaged you and you told me to you came here like a command to put into the Intellect command line to interface and so I tried that out It didn't really help but I did pick up something on a stack overflow Just ran a little command on there to just uninstall all the dependencies reinstall update and just like that The grant watch was working and it was just like oh my god, you know Just to go five more minutes of you know searching for the answer and I found a solution to it So now that's all working nicely in an open environment. Yeah, that's the thing with MPM You just sometimes you just somebody just need to delete your own module folder or just let clear your MPM passion And just restart like do another MPM small fresh and things are working then yeah It's it does trip over itself.
I've been on them. Yeah, I was following a conversation between some developers that follow in They all agreeing that code gets the way forward. Everyone's just having a massive headache over using MPM And you know, so I don't know, you know, I jumped on it. It didn't work for me Well, obviously missing something so something to set up isn't working correctly But you know, it's got all your browser watch built in as well.
So that's pretty clever. It's just it does everything For you, so let's see. Let's see what happens with that one. Um, but yeah, that's about it really That's all the development stuff that I'm using And the plot for well FTP as well filezilla is All not moving.
I think everyone uses that hardly ever use it to be honest But here and there it's You know, I do need it if I'm uploading like a like a specific theme or if I'm creating like a plug-in or something That needs to be uploaded through FTP for safety purposes. Then I'll yeah, I'll use it So yeah, that's all the development side of things and going into the digital art because I do quite a lot of digital art Photoshop Along with an interest Tablet as well. So doing my drawing the tablet and I do the drawing in the Photoshop or I'll use sketchbook Which is a really good tool And the other one I just discovered is called trick-tah Really nice Really really powerful digital art tool. There's loads of these available and all free.
That's the crazy thing They're all free to download and they will open source and be really fun to work with. They'll work well with the tablet Yeah, yeah, they work really really well with tablet. They were designed for that particular like the interest tablet So yeah, you know, I think a lot of fun with these tools and I did use a lot of 3d work back in the day I was using like 3d studio max and Cinema 4d Creating like 3d animations and things like that and then I kind of just like in this one of the boil didn't really have time to like You know play around with that kind of stuff. But just recently I picked up blender Which is a an open-source 3d modeling tool and so downloaded that and it just blew my mind how far this stuff has come now So for a free tool it has pretty much everything to pay one to and then you know you get studio Quality rendering from it as well.
So just like messing around with that And it is a really really good tool to play around with especially when it if you want to get into 3d So yeah, that one so that's all the digital art stuff and then just general backups and just storage a used Dropbox But AWS has set up as well for video files which are being played out on websites things like that But for project management stuff, I'm using Trello which we're using for other podcast organizers So I was an organization but you know, I'm using Trello for quite a lot of stuff actually projects Personal work personal things you know daily stuff that I'm doing As well as managing my hinton We're using Trello to set up individual boards for clients where we can like go through like social media management tasks and stuff like that So yeah, Trello is probably the best one out. I can't think of anything else that comes close to it But I think we discussed it in the previous episode, but yeah, that's pretty much all the software that I'm using Okay, yeah, I mean my list is fairly similar, you know, like I said sketch VS code I use item as my terminal. I sometimes use the VS code built in terminal Depending on the project but most of the time I have that item running because A lot of the time I need to run two processes at once and I just find it easier to open up two tabs in item Then great two tabs in the VS code terminal And then I've got a few like aliases and shortcuts that I've been item as well Quickly like change directories to certain folders and then run run the start command, you know with little shortcuts and stuff like that Like I mentioned the logic is the main thing I use for it's audio thing for the podcast And then I've got a few little utilities which I use I don't use a hell of a lot of apps on a daily basis To do is to do is to the main one that open almost every day. Well, I do open every day So I use that for managing like tasks for personal projects and for web projects It's quite good to do is because it integrates with the Amazon Echo and with the Google home So me and my wife we use it for some shared shared list as well Like stuff to do around the house stuff like shopping lists and stuff like that So it's quite handy to be able to just shout out to your You know your Alexa.
Oh, I'd also to the shopping list and then it's there to sync to our phones or sync to our phone So you're either off our shop so you can just carry on with that And then use it for work as well One feature I like about to do is if someone sends you less an email and it's got a bunch of like action points in there As bullet points you can copy that whole list of bullet points paste it into do is then it adds them as individual items Right. I've tried out so many of the other to do this apps and then some of them do it some of them don't do it very well But to do it seems to get it quite accurate That's cool which is handy use Evernote to sort I use it as a way of digitizing one more documents So I try not to keep too many paper documents around whenever I get an important letter through or something I'll normally use the Evernote app to scan it and then archive it into that Give it a you know a Meaningful name sometimes add tags to it as well and put it all into folders as so I spent quite a lot of time Especially last year when I was moving house I spent a lot of time organizing all my paperwork into Evernote Cool, and then I use it just for like general note taking as well later today And then another cool app I use it's called mono snap, which is for taking screenshots. Oh, okay It's a bit more powerful than the built-in Mac screenshot tool even though that's been updated recently, but it's still a bit more powerful say it lets you take Take a screenshot and then it gives you a preview of that And then what you can do is you can get that preview out of the way and you can take another screenshot And it puts it on the same canvas So you can take multiple screenshots and build like a collage of those if you want And then it's got like your usual sort of annotation tools But the main thing that I like about it is got a blur tool on there as well as you can blur out parts of the screen or completely black them out So that's quite handy and this reason So you should check that out. I think that's pretty much it about within terms of software And there's a few little utilities that I need for work like me use Slack and use Microsoft Teams and Skype and stuff like that Um And if I ever want to make like a quick note which I don't plan on really saving like if I'm just dropping down notes Then I use an app called typeora, which is um, it's just a text editor But it's got it supports markdown as well so you can then so you can take quite detailed notes if you want Yeah, and then you can then export those as markdown or as HTML or as plaintext But then there's no it doesn't have any storage So it just creates a while right so that's why I know if I'm trying down something quickly Then I'll do it in typeora and then if I want to keep that long term then I'll paste that into every note or export it to every note if I can And that's where I keep an archive of it Yeah, and that's essentially it.
That's my doc is fairly lean my doc is um, yeah, and I've also got spaces in my doc So I've grouped grouped my apps so you can there is a way I've got it on my on my website. I'll put a link to it in show notes on How to add spaces so I've got a I've got a block of things which are As background apps so I've got my calendar mail Um, I've got this VPN client that we use for work And they're things that you're open and just don't you look at very often And then I've got my sort of design and develop my apps together And then I've got like productivity ones and messaging and things like that And then I've got like media related apps that's the fly Spotify and messages and what's happened to that Yeah, so great also organized Nice. Yeah, I need to figure out my organization. It was organized like initially was it last week and just recently I downloaded some um drivers for the Nikon one icon DSLR and uh, yeah, it's blurged out four or five new applications on there Yeah, and it's just made a mess with some other additional bits and pieces.
So yeah, I need to organize that stuff. Yeah, I need a new MacBook for so you need yeah, yeah That's on your wishlist, isn't it? I was actually looking at the razor. I was actually thinking about moving back to windows Oh, don't talk to me No, no, no, we're not gonna hit on windows.
Um, I use windows a lot in the last job But I haven't really got an opinion on windows anymore. It's been it's been far too long to use it Haven't used it in a sort of professional sense in a long time I was just thinking about it because I really like the razor laptop It's an amazing piece of kit and the finish on it's uh, it's like a matte finish and it's just like super fast Like you just you just can't you can't compose it with a pricing on it's just ridiculous. So The pricing on a MacBook is exactly sane is it? It's about the same as I'm actually honest, but Yeah, I was looking at it and I was thinking about it.
That's gonna I think as we carry on this episode, that's uh on the wishlist, I think Yeah, all right A gaming laptop. I think we've wanted that now. You've done all that Yeah, yeah, the only other thing I've got is like offline tools. So one thing I don't want to be able to have on my desk is I've got a dot grid notebook.
Oh, they're cool. Yeah. Yeah, it's a be-hance Upgrade I've had it for a while. I don't obviously use it very often because yeah one thing I'll find with nice notebooks Because I don't like to do messy work in them.
They don't use it very often. Yeah, um So I have a second notebook for my rough work Which is just a puck of pad, but it's a squared one. It's not dots. It's a square paper So I use that for my general day-to-day or note-taking and then if I'm designing something and I'm actually not Yeah, if I'm designing something which I potentially going to show to someone if they're a client or you know presenting a meeting Then I might use the dot grid book and do things a bit a bit nicer in there Right, yeah, and I use this nice graph here graph here 1000 pencil, which is sort of a nice bit of weight to it Depending on the type of lead you put in there It's got a little wheel on the on the front so you can you can put a label of the lead the class of lead you've got in there So if you've got several of these you can have you know hb and tb in there Nice.
Yeah, it's quite a nice pencil. Um, I actually ordered it off ebay I think and I've got it at bargain price. I've got it for like six pounds of ebay because they're quite expensive otherwise Um, I think when I bought it it was all around the 15 to 20 pound mark It was quite expensive a couple of years ago bought it and bought it a fee bay and it took I think it took about eight to nine weeks for it to arrive Because I was a kid from China and I was like, oh, okay, so frustrated. I'm on my pencil But you've probably made it for you.
Yeah, well, they're pretty cheap now on Amazon. So I might just pick up a couple more Yeah, I think I'm not as well. Yeah coming nice colors Yeah, that is literally it. That's that's all the stuff that use on a daily basis now So yeah, we mentioned like wishlist.
So have you got do you use your Amazon wishlist? Do you like add a lot of stuff to it? Not really. No, no, no, no.
I've just I just dropped into here and there. Well, what the wife's in his shop Yeah, did any of them work for the birthday just came to nice. Yeah, yeah, for the birthday work I was after the new Game for the PlayStation 4 days gone. All right.
And it's like a apocalyptic game in your Like a guy who's from a bike again And there's a massive story around it's an open world game and you got to travel around on your motorbike Um discover new parts of this, you know, the land that you're on and obviously, you know, you bump into these zombies and stuff and animals that Wolves and deer You got that you carry out tasks for different gangs and different like camps that are set up around the map Brilliant and the story is yes to find his wife something's happened to her They got separated during the evacuation And the whole the major arc of this game is to find out what happened to her So I only just like playing it and I've carried out so many like missions and stuff I'm loving you can talk about what I'm actually loving this game Well, I mentioned it to her because it's I've been waiting for four years for this game to come out And as soon as I found out it was up this year I just dropped in here shot with my wife while she was like cooking something and it kind of stuck And yeah, I got it for birthday and I was like I was well chuffed So that was one of the things in the wishlist that I had that I managed to get hold of But the other things that are on there so like yeah, a new back book pro space gray my brother's got one And uh, I actually do like the space gray color. He doesn't realize yeah, I've got the space gray as well Yeah, so that's on that's on the wishlist. Um, that razor laptop is definitely a wishlist as well But you know what would I do with two laptops this you get twice the matter of work done That's what you do with two laptops potentially one free channel So um, yeah, it is that and I just found out recently We you can do remote play on the PlayStation 4 on your on your laptop and the max supports it as well You just need a control bed. Okay, and uh, it's pretty powerful stuff And moves on to the next thing that I want and that's a really nice 4k or 8k monitor So a nice a nice big one because at the moment I'm using like well, I was using two monitors And uh, the laptop was like the third one.
So I was using all three I found that really handy so I'll have outlook open in one so my laptop I'll have outlook open and then the other two I like together But now I'm back to just the one one at home with the laptop in one morning off this but I'm looking at getting a nice wide Uh, wide del monitor. I've seen a few they are pricey, but I need to pick the right one. That's what it is So that's on there. Okay, so you've got an expensive wishlist is expensive.
I can't think of anything else To be honest Simple really I do my and my amtha wishlist at the moment these days I've gotten the only thing that I've got on there which is I'm saying look now that's tech related is In fact, I've got a uh, the apple magic mouse too because the one I've got is the current battery bad one And uh, it chews through batteries pretty quick So I kept it on my wishlist just to see if it drops down in price and I'll get it I mean it's not expensive at the moment. It's down to 66 at the moment Just have a rechargeable one, but otherwise my wishlist is all like DIY stuff because I'm Yeah, over the past like year I've been really getting into DIY and Just feel like having this massive collection of tools in my shed Yeah, so I've got all sorts of power tools on there and sanders and different saws and blades and all sorts So yeah, just sort of check it every couple of days and just see if anything goes on sale and then Then you know prices drop and then I'll just put it there's but in terms of like tech wise The only thing I really I need to purchase at some point is uh, I do want to get subwoofer for my speakers Because the base response on these elisis speakers isn't great. Right. Um, it has a switch on the back Which allows you to do a base boost, but I've got that switch off.
I don't want I don't think that I should have to turn it on I feel like if I'm turning the base boost on I'm making the work the speakers work too hard And I don't want to do that in case, you know, that's not good for them long term Um, so they do have a subwoofer output So I just need but at least it's don't actually do a subwoofer that goes with these speakers I don't think they do one in at all in fact, so I'm doing a bit of research. I'm looking for some recommendations on a subwoofer I can just stick sort of under my desk or somewhere near my desk Um, so that'll give me some nicer sound I think that's pretty much it really for in terms of tech wishlist. I've already got yeah, I'm quite happy with my desk at the moment Um, I don't mean anything else So yeah, if you want to buy me some tools you can I've got contact actually. Yeah, we talk about that in a bit then all right good stuff.
Um, yeah That's pretty much it on my on the list of topics really Have you ever used kit dot com kit dot com? No, what's that? So it's basically a site where you can create these kit lists so you can I've got a couple that I've created on my on my um profile Uh, and you can just basically talk about the product that you use in that in that kit So I've got one for my desk setup and it's just got all the products on there And uh, then it's got links to you know places where you can buy those from where there's amazon or you know They're actually from vendors for that And it's generally for like the websites aimed at content creators really so you've got you got a lot of like famous youtubers on there People like my cuz brown Lee and you know Casey Neister and stuff like that nice that I don't have to say anything and um, they just share You know They're big gear basically and then I've got another kit on there which is um For podcasting my stuff. I use a podcasting.
So if anyone else is like interested in podcasting and they want to see oh, what does another podcast Well, here you go. These are the actual products I use and then links to go and buy them if you want Yeah, let's go. I have a cover so you can always great one on there and then we can sit there and show it So there was this um someone tweeted it yesterday. Um a it's called sizzy And it's a website and essentially well, it's not a website.
It's um, it's a browser And it's a responsive browser and it's aimed at developers. So you might have heard of it. Yeah Uh, yeah, I've seen it they started off well, I haven't seen it recently. I know they started off as a um A mock-ups tool where you click you can put in a URL and it shows you how it looks at different different screenshots Let me queries is that same one?
I think it is. Yeah. Yeah, but it's another got an actual browser Which you it's pretty good. I pay for it.
It's not expensive and um, yeah, it does everything within there I'm not too sure how it syncs with them, you know You're existing sort of like dev tools but it'd be interesting to see how that all works together So I think I'm gonna pick that up this weekend on Download it and see how that works. Nothing is handy just having that um using the Using it in dev tools and just Scaredake switching Yeah, it's nice that you can see various break points all at the same time and they all in sync like as you scroll in one The other scroll as well. Exactly. Yeah, it's really handy.
So I think that's on the list of new tools So five pounds five pounds per month for a web browser when you can pay for it up front, right? All of it you can pay for three years. Uh, it's it's build yearly. So it's a subscription model.
It's not a one-off purchase So it's build annually. Check it out. Just get all of it. All right.
Let's know it goes. Yeah, definitely All right, um, yeah, I think we're pretty much at a time now Um, so there's nothing else on the list. So is anything any last words anything you want to recommend for this week? Oh, no guys.
I think the best thing to do is just go out there and just um Just pick up anything new anything new. Um, we've got its development and just uh, give it that extra five ten minutes So I learned myself this morning. All I needed was another five minutes of, you know, research reading and get a task done So, you know anything out there you pick up just get through it as much as you can but spend that extra five minutes on it I guarantee you, you know, you'll get your your task done All right, cool. I will speak to you in the next episode.
Have a good weekend. Take it