Brett + 2

Welcome to the Overtired Podcast

Jeff: [00:00:00] Hello everybody. This is the Overtired podcast. The three of us are all together for the first time since the Carter administration. Um, it is great to see you both here. I am Jeff Severance Gunzel if I didn’t say that already.

Um, and I’m here with Christina Warren and I’m here with Brett Terpstra and hello to both of you.

Brett: Hi.

Jeff: Great to see you both.

Brett: Yeah, it’s good to see you too. I feel like I was really deadpan in the pre-show. I’ll try to liven it up for you. I was a horrible audience. You were cracking jokes and I was just

Jeff: that’s true. Christina, before you came on, man, I was hot. I was on fire and Brett was, all Brett was doing was chewing and dropping Popsicle parts.

Brett: Yep. I ate, I ate part of a coconut outshine Popsicle off of a concrete floor, but

Jeff: It is true, and I didn’t even see him check it [00:01:00] for cat hair,

Brett: I did though.

Jeff: but I believe he did because he’s a, he’s a very

Brett: I just vacuumed in

Jeff: He’s a very good American

Brett: All right.

Christina’s Health Journey

Brett: Well, um, I, Christina has a lot of health stuff to share and I wanna save time for that. So let’s kick off the mental health corner. Um, let’s let Christina go first, because if it takes the whole show, it takes the whole show.

Go for it.

Christina: Uh, I, I will not take this hold show, but thank you. Yeah. So, um, my mental health is okay-ish. Um, I would say the okay-ish part is, is because of things that are happening with my physical health and then some of the medications that I’ve had to be on, um, uh, to deal with it. Uh, prednisone. Fucking sucks, man.

Never nev n never take it if you can avoid it. Um, but why Christina, why are you on prednisone or why were you on prednisone for five days? Um, uh, and I’m not anymore to be clear, but that certainly did not help my mental health. Um, at the beginning of November, I woke up and I thought that I’d [00:02:00] slept on my shoulder wrong.

And, um, uh, and, and just some, some background. I, I don’t know if this is pertinent to how my injury took place or not, but, but it, I’m sure that it didn’t help. Um, I have scoliosis and in the top and the bottom of my spine, so I have it at the top of my, like, neck area and my lower back. And so my back is like a crooked s um, this will be relevant in a, in a second, but, but I, I thought that I had slept on my back bunny, and I was like, okay, well, all right, it hurts a lot, but fine. Um, and then it, a, a couple of days passed and it didn’t get any better, and then like a week passed and I was at the point where I was like, I almost feel like I need to go to the. Emergency room, I’m in pain. That is that significant. Um, and, you know, didn’t get any better. So I took some of grant’s, Gabapentin, and I took, um, some, some, uh, a few other things and I was able to get in with like a, a, a sports and spine guy.

Um, and um, [00:03:00] he looked at me and he was like, yeah, I think that you have like a, a, a bolting disc, also known as a herniated disc. Go to physical therapy. See me later. We’ll, we’ll deal with it. Um. Basically like my whole left side was, was, was really sore and, and I had a lot of pain and then I had numbness in my, my fingers and um, and, and that was a problem the next day, which was actually my birthday.

The numbness had at this point spread to my right side and also my lower extremities. And so at this point I called the doctor and he was like, yeah, you should go to the er. And so I went to the ER and, and they weren’t able to do anything for me other than give me, you know, like, um, you know, I was hoping they might give me like, some sort of steroid injection or something.

They wouldn’t do anything other than, um, basically, um, they gave me like another type of maybe, maybe pain pill or whatever. Um, but that allowed the doctor to go ahead and. Write, uh, write up an MRI took forever for me to get an MRI, I actually had to get it in Atlanta. [00:04:00] Fun fact, uh, sometimes it is cheaper to just pay and not go through insurance and get an MR MRI and, um, a, um, uh, an x-ray, um, I was able to do it for $450

Jeff: Whoa. Really?

Christina: Yeah, $400 for the MR mri. $50 for the x-ray.

Jeff: Wow.

Christina: Yeah. Yeah.

Brett: how I, they, I had an MRI, they charged me like $1,200 and then they failed to bill insurance 'cause I was between insurance.

Christina: Yes. Yeah. So what happened was, and and honestly that was gonna be the situation that I was in, not between insurance stuff, but they weren’t even gonna bill insurance. And insurance only approved certain facilities and to get into those facilities is almost impossible. Um, and so, no, there are a lot of like get an MR, I now get a, you know, mammogram, get ghetto, whatever places.

And because America’s healthcare system is a HealthScape, you can bypass insurance and they will charge you way less than whatever they bill insurance for. So I, I don’t know if it’s part of the country, you know, like Seattle I think might [00:05:00] probably would’ve been more expensive. But yeah, I was able to find this place like a mile from like, not even a mile from where my parents lived, um, that did the x-rays and the MRI for $450 total.

Brett: I, I hate, I hate that. That’s true, but

Christina: Me too. Me too. No, no. It pisses me off. Honestly, it makes me angry because like, I’m glad that I was able to do that and get it, you know, uh, uh, expedited. Then I go into the spine, um, guy earlier this week and he looks at it and he’s like, yep, you’ve got a massive bulging disc on, on C seven, which is the, the part of your lower cervical or cervical spine, which is your neck.

Um, and it’s where it connects to your ver bray. It’s like, you know, there are a few things you can do. You can do, you know, injections, you can do surgery. He is like, I’m gonna recommend you to a neurosurgeon. And I go to the neurosurgeon yesterday and he was showing me or not, uh, yeah, yesterday he was showing me the, the, the, the scans and, and showing like you up close and it’s, yeah, it’s pretty massive.

Like where, where, where the disc is like it is. You could see it just from one view, like, just from like [00:06:00] looking at it like, kind of like outside, like you could actually like see like it was visible, but then when you zoomed in it’s like, oh shit, this, this thing is like massive and it’s pressing on these nerves that then go into my, my hands and other areas.

But it’s pressing on both sides. It’s primarily on my left side, but it’s pressing on on my right side too, which is not good. So, um, he basically was like, okay. He was like, you know, this could go away. He was like, the pain isn’t really what I’m wanting to, to treat here. It’s, it’s the, the weakness because my, my left arm is incredibly weak.

Like when they do like the, the test where like they, they push back on you to see like, okay, like how, how much can you, what, like, I am, I’m almost immediately like, I can’t hold anything back. Right? Like I’m, I’m, I’m like a toddler in terms of my strength. So, and, and then I’m freaked out because I don’t have a lot of feeling in my hands and, and that’s terrifying.

Um, I’m also.

Jeff: so terrifying,

Christina: I’m, I’m also like in extreme pain because of, of, of where this sits. Like I can’t sleep well. Like [00:07:00] the whole thing sucks. Like the MRI, which was was like the most painful, like 25 minutes, like of my existence. 'cause I was laying flat on my back. I’m not allowed to move and I’m just like, I’m in just incredible pain with that part of, of, of, of my, my side.

Like, it, it was. It was terrible. Um, but, uh, but he was like, yeah. Um, these are the sorts of surgical options we have. Um, he’s gonna, um, do basically what what he wants to do is basically do a thing where he would put in a, um, an artificial or, or synthetic disc. So they’re gonna remove the disc, put in a synthetic one.

They’ll go in through the, the front of my throat to access the, my, my, my, my spine. Um, put that there and, um, you know, I’ll, I’ll be overnight in the hospital. Um, and then it’ll be a few weeks of recovery and the, the, the pain should go away immediately. Um, but it, it could be up to two years before I get full, you know, feeling back in my arm.

So anyway,

Jeff: years, Jesus. And

Christina: I mean, and hopefully less than that, but, but it could be [00:08:00] up to that.

Jeff: there’s no part of this at this point. That’s a mystery to you, right?

Christina: The mystery is, I don’t know how this happened.

Jeff: You don’t know how it happened, right? Of course. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah.

Brett: So tell, tell us about the ghastly surgery. The, the throat thing really threw me like, I can’t imagine that

Christina: yeah, yeah. So, well, 'cause the thing is, is that usually if what they just do, like spinal fusion, they’ll go in at the back of your neck, um, and then they’ll remove the, the, um, the, the, the, the disc. And then they’ll fuse your, your, your two bones together. Basically. They’ll, they’ll, they’ll, they’ll fuse this part of the vertebrae, but because they’re going to be replacing the, the disc, they need more room.

So that’s why they have to go in through the, through, through basically your throat so that they can have more room to work.

Jeff: Good lord. No thank you.

Brett: Ugh. Wow.

Jeff: Okay.

Brett: I am really sorry that is happening. That is, that is, that dwarfs my health concerns. That is just constant pain [00:09:00] and, and it would be really scary.

Christina: Yeah. Yeah. It’s not great. It’s not great, but I’m, I’m, I’m doing what I can and, uh, like I have, you know, a small amount of, of Oxycodine and I have like a, a, a, you know, some other pain medication and I’m taking the gabapentin and like, that’s helpful. The bad part is like your body, like every 12, 15 hours, like whatever, like the, the, the cycle is like, you feel it leave your system and like if you’re asleep, you wake up, right?

Like, it’s one of those things, like, you immediately feel it, like when it leaves your system. And I’ve never had to do anything for pain management before. And they have me on a very, they have me like on the smallest amount of like, oxycodone you can be on. Um, and I’m using it sparingly because I don’t wanna, you know, be reliant on, on it or whatever.

But it, it, but it is one of those things where I’m like, yeah, like sometimes you need fucking opiates because, you know, the pain is like so constant. And the thing is like, what sucks is that it’s not always the same type of pain. Like sometimes it’s throbbing, sometimes it’s sharp, sometimes it’s like whatever.

It sucks. But the hardest thing [00:10:00] is like, and. This does impact my mental health. Like it’s hard to sleep. Like, and I’m a side sleeper. I’m a side sleeper, and I’m gonna have to become a back sleeper. So, you know. Yeah. It’s just, it’s, it’s not great. It’s not great, but, you know, that, that, that, that, that’s me.

The, the good news is, and I’m very, very gratified, like I have a good surgeon. Um, I’m gonna be able to get in to get this done relatively quickly. He had an appointment for next week. I don’t think that insurance would’ve even been able to approve things fast enough for, for, for that regard. And I have, um, commitments that I can’t make then.

And I, and that would also mean that I wouldn’t be able to go visit my family for Christmas. So hopefully I’ll do it right after Christmas. I’m just gonna wait, you know, for, for insurance to, to do its thing, knock on wood, and then schedule, um, from there. But yeah,

Jeff: Woof.

Christina: so that’s me. Um, uh, who wants to go next?

Jeff or, uh, Jeff or Brett?

Jeff: It’s like, that’s me. Hot potato throwing it.

Brett: I’ll, I’ll go.

Brett’s Insurance Woes

Brett: I can continue on the insurance topic. Um, I was, for a few months [00:11:00] after getting laid off, I was on Minsu, which is Minnesota’s Medicaid, um, v version of Medicaid. And so basically I paid nothing and I had better insurance than I usually have with, uh, you know, a full deductible and premiums and everything.

And it was fantastic. I was getting all the care I needed for all of the health stuff I’m going through. Um, I, they, a, a new doctor I found, ordered the 15 tests and I passed out 'cause it was so much blood and. And it, I was getting, but I was getting all these tests run. I was getting results, we were discovering things.

And then my unemployment checks, the income from unemployment went like $300 over the cap for Medicaid. So [00:12:00] all of a sudden, overnight I was cut from Medicaid and I had to do an early sign up, and now I’m on courts and it sucks bad. Like they’re not covering my meds. Last month cost me $600. I was also paying.

In addition to that, a $300 premium plus every doctor’s visit is 50 bucks out of pocket. So this will hopefully only last until January, and then it’ll flip over and I will be able to demonstrate basically no income, um, until like Mark makes enough money that it gets reported. Um, and even, uh, until then, like I literally am making under the, the poverty limit.

So, um, I hope to be back on Medicaid shortly. I have one more month. I’ll have to pay my $600 to refill. I [00:13:00] cashed out my 401k. Um, like things were, everything was up high enough that I had made, I. I had made tens of thousands of dollars just on the investments and the 401k, but I also have a lot of concerns about the market volatility around Nvidia and the AI bubble in general.

Um, so taking my money out of the market just felt okay to me. I paid the 10%, uh, penalty

Jeff: Mm-hmm.

Brett: and ultimately I, I came out with enough cash that I can invest on my own and be able to cover the next six months. Uh, if I don’t have any other income, which I hope to, I hope to not spend my nest egg. Um, but I did, I did a lot of thinking and calculating and I think I made the right choices.

But anyway, [00:14:00] that will help if I have to pay for medical stuff that will help. Um. And then I’ve had insomnia, bad on and off. Right now I’m coming off of two days of good sleep. You’re catching me on a good day. Um, but

Jeff: Still wouldn’t laugh at my jokes.

Brett: before that it was, well, that’s the thing is like before that, it was four nights where I slept two to four hours per night, and by the end of it, I could barely walk.

And so two nights of sleep after a stint like that, like, I’m just super, I’m deadpan, I’m dazed. Um, I could lay down and fall asleep at any time. Um, I, so, so keep me awake. Um, but yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s me. Mental health is good. Like I’m in pretty high spirits considering all this, like financial stuff and everything.

Like my mood has been pretty stable. I’ve been getting a lot of coding done. I’ll tell you about projects in [00:15:00] a minute, but, um, but that’s, that’s me. I’m done.

Jeff: Awesome. I’m enjoying watching your cat roll around, but clearly cannot decide to lay down at this point.

Brett: No, nobody is very persnickety.

Jeff: I literally have to put my. Well, you say put a cat down like you used to. When you put a kid down for a nap, you say you wanna put 'em down. Right? That’s where it’s coming from. I now have a chair next to my desk, 'cause I have one cat that walks around Yowling at about 11:00 AM while I’m working. And I have to like, put 'em down for a nap.

It’s pathetic. It’s pathetic that I do that. Let’s just be clear.

Brett: Yeah.

Jeff: soulmate though.

Jeff’s Mental Health Update

Jeff: Um, I’m doing good. I’m, I’m, I’ve been feeling kind of light lately in a nice way. I’ve had ups and downs, but even with the ups and downs, there’s like a, except for one day last week was, there’s just been feeling kind of good in general, which is remarkable in a way.

'cause it’s just like stressful time. There’s some stressful business stuff, like, [00:16:00] a lot of stuff like that. But I’m feeling good and, and just like, uh, yeah, just light. I don’t know, it’s weird. Like, I’ve just been noticing that I feel kind of light and, uh. And not, not manic, not high light.

Brett: Yeah. No, that’s

Jeff: uh, and that’s, that’s lovely.

So yeah. And so I’m doing good. I’m doing good. I fucking, it’s cold. Which sucks 'cause it just means for everybody that’s heard about my workshop over the years, that I can’t really go out there and have it be pleasant

Brett: It’s, it’s been Minnesota thus far. Has had, we’ve had like one, one Sub-Zero day.

Jeff: whatever. It’s fucking cold.

Christina: Yeah. What one? Brett? Brett. It’s December 6th as we’re recording this one Sub-Zero day. That’s insane.

Brett: Is it

Jeff: Granted, granted I’ve been dressing warm, so I’m ready to go out the door for ice related things. Meaning, meaning government, ice,

Brett: Uh, yeah. Yeah.

Jeff: So I like wear my long underwear during [00:17:00] the day. 'cause actually like recently. So at my son’s school, which is like six blocks from here, um, has a lot of Somali immigrants in it.

And, and uh, and there was a, at one point there was ice activity in the other direction, um, uh, uh, near me. And so neighbors put out a call here around so that at dismissal time people would pair up at all the intersections surrounding the school. And, um, and like a quick signal group popped up, whatever.

It was so amazing because like we all just popped out there. And by the time I got out, uh, everyone was already like, posted up and I was like, I’m a, in these situations, I am a wanderer. You want me roaming? I don’t want to pair up with somebody I don’t like, I just, I grabbed a camera with a Zoom on it and like, I was like, I’m in roam.

Um, it’s what I was as an activist, what I was as a reporter, like it’s just my nature. Um, but like. Everybody was out and like, and they were just like, they were ready man. And then we got like the all clear and you could just see people in the [00:18:00] neighborhood just like standing down and going home. But because of the true threat and the ongoing arrests here, now that the Minneapolis stuff has started, like I do, I was like wearing long underwear just, and I have a little bag by the door ready to like pop out if something comes up and I can be helpful.

Um, and uh, and I guess what I’m saying is I should use that to go into the garage as well if I’m already prepared.

Brett: Right.

Jeff: But here’s, okay, so here’s a mental health thing actually. So I, one of the, I’ve gone through a few years of just sort of a little bit of paralysis around being able to just, I don’t know what, like do anything that is kind of project related that takes some thinking, whatever it is, like I’m talking about around the house or things that have kind of broken over the years, whatever.

So I’ve had this snowblower and it’s a really good snowblower. It’s got headlights. And, uh, and I used to love snow blowing the entire block. Like it just made me feel good, made me feel useful. Um, and sorry I cough. I left it outside for a [00:19:00] year for a, like a winter and a spring and water got into the gas tank.

It rusted out in there. I knew I couldn’t start it or I’d ruin the whole damn engine. So I left it for two years and I felt bad about myself. But this year, just like probably a month before the first big snowfall, I fucking replaced a gas tank and a carburetor on a machine. And I have never done anything like that in my life.

And so then we got the snowfall and I, and I snow blowed this whole block

Brett: Nice.

Jeff: great. 'cause now they all owe me.

Brett: I, uh, I have a, uh, so I have a little electric powered, uh, snowblower that can handle like two inches of snow. Um, and, and on big snowfalls, if you get out there every hour and keep up with it, it, it works. But, but I, my back right now, I can’t stand for, I can’t stand still for 10 minutes and I can’t move for more than like five minutes.

And so I’m, I’m very disabled and El has good days and bad days, uh, thus [00:20:00] far. L’s been out there with a shovel, um, really being the hero. But we have a next door neighbor with a big gas powered snowblower. And so we went over, brought them gifts, and, um, asked if they would take care of our driveway on days we couldn’t, uh, for like, you know, we’d pay 'em 25 bucks to do the driveway.

And, uh, and they were, he was still reluctant to accept money. Um. But, but we both agreed it was better to like make it a, a transaction.

Jeff: Oh my God. You don’t want to get into weird Minnesota neighbor relational.

Brett: right. You don’t want the you owe me thing. Um, so, so we have that set up. But in the process we made really good friends with our neighbor. Like we sat down in their living room for I think 45 minutes and just like talked about health and politics and it was, it was really fun.

They’re, they’re retired. They’re in their [00:21:00] seventies and like act, he always looks super grumpy. I always thought he was a mean old man. He’s actually, he laughs more easily than most people I’ve ever met. Um, he’s actually, when people say, oh, he is actually a teddy bear, this guy really is, he’s just jovial.

Uh, he just has resting angry old man face.

Jeff: Or like my, I have public mis throat face, like when I’m out and about, especially when I’m shopping, I know that my face is, I’m gonna fucking kill you if you look me in the eye

Brett: I used

Jeff: is not my general disposition.

Brett: people used to tell me that about myself, but I feel like I, I carry myself differently these days than I did when I was younger.

Jeff: You know what I learned? Do you, have you both watched Veep,

Christina: Yes,

Jeff: you know, Richard sp split, right? Um, and, and he always kind of has this sweet like half smile and he is kind of looking up and I, I figured out at one point I was in an airport, which is where my kill everybody face especially comes up. Just to be clear.

TSA, it’s just a feeling inside. I [00:22:00] have no desire to act to this out. I realized that if I make the Richard Plet face, which I can try to make for you now, which is something like if I just make the Richard Plet face, my whole disposition

Brett: yeah. Yeah.

Jeff: uh, and I even feel a little better. And so I just wanna recommend that to people.

Look up Richard Spt, look at his face.

Christina: Hey, future President Bridges split.

Jeff: future President Richard Splat, also excellent in the Detroiters. Um, that’s all, uh, that’s all I wanted to say about that.

Brett: I have found that like when I’m texting with someone, if I start to get frustrated, you know, you know that point where you’re still adding smiley emoticons even though you’re actually not, you’re actually getting pissed off, but you don’t wanna sound super bitchy about it, so you’re adding smile. I have found that when I add a smiley emoji in those circumstances, if I actually smile before I send it, it like my [00:23:00] mood will adjust to match, to match the tone I’m trying to convey, and it lessens my frustration with the other person.

Jeff: a little joy wrist rocket.

Christina: Yeah. Hey, I mean, no, but hey, but, but that, that, that, that, that’s interesting. I mean, they’re, they, they’ve done studies that like show that, right? That like show like, you know, I mean, like, some of this is all like bullshit to a certain extent, but there is something to be said for like, you know, like the power of like positive thinking and like, you know, if you go into things with like, different types of attitudes or even like, even if you like, go into job interviews or other situations, like you act confident or you smile, or you act happy or whatever.

Even if you’re not like it, the, the, the, the euphoria, you know, that those sorts of uh, um, endorphin reactions or whatever can be real. So that’s interesting.

Brett: Yeah, I found, I found going into job interviews with my usual sarcastic and bitter, um, kind of mindset,

Jeff: I already hate this job.

Brett: it doesn’t play well. It doesn’t play well. So what are your weaknesses? Fuck off. Um,[00:24:00]

Christina: right. Well, well, well, I hate people.

Jeff: Yeah. Dealing with motherfuckers like you, that’s one weakness.

Sponsor Spot: Shopify

Brett: let’s, uh, let’s do a sponsor spot and then I want to hear about Christina winning a contest.

Christina: yes.

Jeff: very

Brett: wanna, you wanna take it away?

Sponsor: Shopify

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shopify.com/ Overtired [00:26:00] cha. Uh,

Brett: the, uh, the group, the group input on the last URL, I feel like we can charge extra for that. That was

Jeff: Yeah. Cha-ching

Brett: they got the chorus, they got the Overtired

Christina: You did. You got the Overtired

Jeff: They didn’t think to ask for it, but that’s our brand.

Christina: shopify.com/ Overtired.

Jeff Tweedy

Jeff: What was, uh, I was watching a Stephen Colbert interview with Jeff Tweedy, who just put out a triple album and, uh, it was a very thoughtful, sweet interview. And then Stephen Colbert said, you know, you’re not supposed to do this.

And Jeff Tweety said, it’s all part of my career long effort to leave the public wanting less.

Christina: Ha,

Jeff: That was a great bit.

Christina: that’s a fantastic bit. A side note, there are a couple of really good NPR, um, uh, tiny desks that have come out in the last couple of month, uh, couple of weeks. Um, uh, one is shockingly, I, I’ll, I’ll just be a a, a fucking boomer about it. The Googo dolls. Theirs was [00:27:00] great. It’s fantastic. They did a great job.

It already has like millions of views, like it wrecked up like over a million views, I think like in like, like less than 24 hours. They did a great job, but, uh, but Brandy Carlisle, uh, did one, um, the other day and hers is really, really good too. So, um, so yeah. Yeah, exactly. So yeah. Anyway, you said, you saying Jeff pd maybe, I don’t know how I got from Wilco to like, you know, there,

Jeff: Yeah. Well, they’ve done some good, he’s done his own good

Christina: he has, he has done his own.

Good, good. That’s honestly, that’s probably what I was thinking of, but

Jeff: It’s my favorite Jeff besides me because Bezos, he’s not in the, he’s not in the game.

Christina: No. No, he’s not. No. Um, he, he’s, he’s not on the Christmas card list at all.

Jeff: Oh man.

Jeff’s Concert Marathon

Jeff: Can I just tell you guys that I did something, um, I did something crazy a couple weeks ago and I went to three shows in one week, like I was 20 fucking two,

Brett: Good grief.

Jeff: and. It was a blast. So, okay, so the background of this is my oldest son [00:28:00] loves hip hop, and when we drive him to college and back, or when I do, it’s often just me.

Um, he, he goes deep and he, it’s a lot of like, kind of indie hip hop and a lot. It’s just an interesting, he listens to interesting shit, but he will go deep and he’ll just like, give me a tour through someone’s discography or through all their features somewhere, whatever it is. And like, it’s the kind of input that I love, which is just like, I don’t, even if it’s not my genre, like if you’re passionate and you can just weave me through the interrelationship and the history and whatever it is I’m in.

So as a result of that, made me a huge fan of Danny Brown and made me a huge fan of the sky, Billy Woods. And so what happened was I went to a hip hop show at the seventh Street entry, uh, which is attached to First Avenue. It’s a little club, very small, lovely little place, the only place my band could sell out.

Um, and I watched a hip hop show there on a Monday night, Tuesday night. I went to the Uptown Theater, which Brett is now a actually an operating [00:29:00] theater for shows. Uh, and I, and I saw Danny Brown, but I also saw two hyper pop bands, a genre I was not previously aware of, including one, which was amazing, called Fem Tenal.

And I was in line to get into that show behind furries, behind trans Kids. Like it was this, I was the weirdest, like I did not belong. Underscores played, and, and this will mean something to somebody out there, but not, didn’t mean anything to me until that night. And, uh. I felt like such, there were times, not during Danny Brown, Danny Brown’s my age all good.

But like there were times where I was in the crowd 'cause I’m tall. Anybody that doesn’t know I’m very tall and I’m wearing like a not very comfortable or safe guy seeming outfit, a black hoodie, a black stocking cap. Like I basically looked like I’m possibly a shooter and, and I’m like standing among all these young people loving it, but feeling a little like, should I go to the back?

Even like I was leaving that show [00:30:00] and the only people my age were people’s parents that were waiting to pick them up on the way out. So anyway, that was night two. Danny Brown was awesome. And then two nights later I went to see, this is way more my speed, a band called the Dazzling Kilman who were a band that.

Came out in the nineties, St. Louis and a noisy Matthew Rock. Wikipedia claims they invented math rock. It’s a really stupid claim, uh, but it’s a lovely, interesting band and it’s a friend of mine named Nick Sakes, who’s who fronted that band and was in all these great bands back when I was in bands called Colos Mite and Sick Bay, and all this is great shit.

So they played a reunion show. In this tiny punk rock club here called Cloudland, just a lovely little punk rock club. And, um, and, and that was like rounded out my week. So like, I was definitely, uh, a tourist the early part of the week, mostly at the Danny Brown Show. But then I like got to come home to my noisy punk rock [00:31:00] on, uh, on Thursday night.

And I, I fucking did three shows and it hurt so bad. Like even by the first of three bands on the second night. I was like, I don’t think I can make it. And I do. I already pregame shows with ibuprofen. Just to be really clear, I microdose glucose tabs at shows like, like I am, I am a full on old man doing these things.

But, um, I did get some cred with my kids for being at a hyper pop show all by myself. And,

Christina: Hell yeah. A a

Jeff: friends seemed impressed.

Christina: no, as a as, as as they should be. I’m impressed. And like, and I, I, I typically like, I definitely go to like more of like, I go, I go to shows more frequently and, and I’m, I’m even like, I’m, I’m gonna be real with you. I’m like, yeah, three in one week.

Jeff: That’s a lot.

Christina: That’s a lot. That’s a lot.

Jeff: man. Did I feel good when I walked home from that last show though? I was like, I fucking did it. I did not believe I wasn’t gonna bail on at least two of those shows, if not all three. Anyway, just wanted to say

Brett: I [00:32:00] do like one show a year, but

Jeff: that’s how I’ve been for years this year. I think I’ve seen eight shows.

Brett: damn.

Jeff: Yeah, it’s

Brett: Alright, so you’ve been teasing us about this, this contest you won.

Jeff: Yeah, please, Christina. Sorry to push that off.

Christina: No, no, no, no. That’s, that’s completely okay. That, that, that, that’s great. Uh, no.

Christina Wins Big

Christina: So, um, I won two six K monitors.

Brett: Damn.

Jeff: is that what those boxes are behind you?

Christina: Yeah, yeah. This is what the boxes are behind me, so I haven’t been able to get them up because this happened. I got them literally right in the midst of all this stuff with my back. Um, but I do have an Ergotron poll now that is here, and, and Grant has said that he will, will get them up. But yeah, so I won 2 32 inch six K monitors from a Reddit contest.

Brett: How, how, how,

Jeff: How does this happen? How do I find a Reddit contest?

Christina: Yeah. So I got lucky. So I have, I, I have a clearly, well, well, um, there was a little, there was a little bit of like, other step to it than that, but like, uh, so how it worked was basically, um, LG is basically just put out [00:33:00] two, they put out a new 32 inch six K monitor. I’ll have it linked in, in, in the show notes.

Um, so we’ve talked about this on this podcast before, but like one of my big, like. Pet peeve, like things that I can’t get past. It’s like I need like a retina screen. Like I need like the, the perfect pixel doubling thing for that the Mac Os deals with, because I’ve used a 5K screen, either through an iMac or um, an lg, um, ultra fine or, um, a, uh, studio display. For like 11 years. And, and I, and I’ve been using retina displays on laptops even longer than that. And so if I use like a regular 4K display, like it just, it, it doesn’t work for me. Um, you can use apps like, um, like better control and other things to kind of emulate, like what would be like if you doubled the resolution, then it, it down, you know, um, of samples that, so that.

It looks better than, than if it’s just like the, the, the 4K stuff where in the, the user interface things are too big and whatnot. And to be clear, this is a Macco West problem. If [00:34:00] you are using Windows or Linux or any other operating system that does fractional scaling, um, correctly, then this is not a problem.

But Macco West does not do fractional scaling direct, uh, correctly. Um, weirdly iOS can, like, they can do three X resolution and other things. Um, but, but, but Macs does not. And that’s weird because some of the native resolutions on some of the MacBook errors are not even perfectly pixeled doubled, meaning Apple is already having to do a certain amount of like resolution changes to, to fit into their own, created by their, their own hubris, like way of insisting on, on only having like, like two x pixel doubling 18 years ago, we could have had independent, uh, resolutions, uh, um, for, for UI elements and, and, and window bars.

But anyway, I, I’m, I’m digressing anyway. I was looking at trying to get either a second, uh, studio display, which I don’t wanna do because Apple’s reportedly going to be putting out a new one. Um, and they’re expensive or getting, um, there are now a number of different six K [00:35:00] displays that are not $6,000 that are on the market.

So, um, uh, uh, Asus has one, um, there is one from like a, a Chinese company called like, or Q Con that, um, looks like a, a complete copy of this, of the pro display XDR. It has a different panel, but it’s, it’s six K and they, they’ve copied the whole design and it’s aluminum and it’s glossy and it looks great, but I’d have to like get it from like.

A weird distributor, and if I have any issues with it, I don’t really wanna have to send it back to China and whatnot. And then LG has one that they just put out. And so I’ve been researching these on, on Mac rumors and on some other forums. And, um, I, uh, I, somebody in one of the Mac Roomers forums like posted that there was like a contest that LG was running in a few different subreddits where they were like, tell us why you should get one of, like, we’re gonna be giving away like either one or two monitors, and I guess they did this in a few subreddits.

Tell us why this would be good for your workflow. And, um, I guess I, I guess I’m one of the people who kind of read the [00:36:00] assignment because it, okay, I’ll just be honest with this, with, with you guys on this podcast, uh, because I, I don’t think anyone from LG will hear this and my answers were accurate anyway.

But anyway, this was not the sort of contest where it was like we will randomly select a winner. This was the moderators and lg, were going to read the responses and choose the winner.

Jeff: Got it.

Christina: So if you spend a little bit of time and thoughtfully write out a response, maybe you stand a better chance of winning the contest.

Jeff: yeah, yeah. Put the work in like it was 2002.

Christina: Right. Anyway, I still was shocked when I like woke up like on like Halloween and they were like, congratulations, you’ve won two monitors. I’m like, I’m sorry. What?

Jeff: That’s amazing.

Christina: Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Jeff: Nice work. I know I’ve, you know, I’ve been staring at those boxes behind you this whole time, just being like, those look like some sweet monitors.

Christina: yeah, yeah.

Monitor Setup Challenges

Christina: I mean, and, uh, [00:37:00] uh, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, and I, I’m very much, so my, my, my only issue is, okay, how am I gonna get these on my desk? So I’m gonna have to do something with my iMac and I’m probably gonna have to get rid of my, my my, my 5K, um, uh, uh, studio display, at least in the short term.

Ergotron Mounts and Tall Poles

Christina: Um, but what I did do is I, um, I ordered from, um, Ergotron, 'cause I already have.

Um, two of their, um, LX mounts, um, or, or, or, or arms. Um, and only one of them is being used right now. And then I have a different arm that I use for the, um, um, iMac. Um, they sell like a, if you call 'em directly, you can get them to send you a tall pole so that you can put the two arms on top of them. And that way I think I can like, have them so that I can have like one pole and then like have one on one side, one

Jeff: I have a tall pole.

Christina: and, and yeah, that’s what she said.

Um,

Jeff: as soon as I said it, I was like, for fuck’s sake. But

Christina: um, but, uh, but, but yeah, but so that way I think I, I can, I, in theory, I can stack the market and have 'em side by side. I don’t know. Um, I got that. I, I had to call Tron and, and order that from them. [00:38:00] Um, it was only a hundred dollars for, for the poll and then $50 for a handling fee.

Jeff: It’s not easy to ship a tall pole.

Brett: That’s what she said.

Christina: that is what she said. Uh, that is exactly what she said. But yeah, so I, I, the, the, the unfortunate thing is that, um, I, um, I, I had to, uh, get a, like all these, they, they came in literally right before Thanksgiving, and then I’ve had, like, all my back stuff has

Jeff: Yeah, no

Christina: debilitating, but I’m looking forward to, um, getting them set up and used.

And, uh, yeah.

Review Plans and Honest Assessments

Christina: And then full review will be coming to, uh, to, I have to post a review on Reddit, but then I will also be doing a more in depth review, uh, on this podcast if anybody’s interested in, in other places too, to like, let let you know, like if it’s worth your money or not. Um, 'cause there, like I said, there are, there are a few other options out there.

So it’s not one of those things where like, you know, um, like, thank you very much for the free monitor, um, monitors. But, but I, I will, I will give like the, the, you know, an honest assessment or

Current Display Setup

Brett: So [00:39:00] do you currently have a two display setup?

Christina: No. Um, well, yes, and kind of, so I have my, my, I have my 5K studio display, and then I have like my iMac that I use as a two to display setup. But then otherwise, what I’ve had to do, and this is actually part of why I’m looking forward to this, is I have a 4K 27 inch monitor, but it’s garbage. And it, it’s one of those things where I don’t wanna use it with my Mac.

And so I wind up only using it with my, with my Windows machine, with my framework desktop, um, with my Windows or Linux machine. And, and because that, even though I, it supports Thunderbolt, the Apple display is pain in the ass to use with those things. It doesn’t have the KVM built in. Like, it doesn’t like it, it just, it’s not good for that situation.

So yeah, this will be of this size. I mean, again, like I, I, I’m 2 32 inch monitors. I don’t know how I’m gonna deal with that on my

Jeff: I

Brett: yeah. So right now I’m looking at 2 32 inch like UHD monitors,

Christina: Yeah,[00:40:00]

Brett: I will say that on days when my neck hurts, it sucks. It’s a, it’s too wide a range to, to like pan back and forth quickly. Like I’ll throw my back out, like trying to keep track of stuff. Um, but I have found that like if I keep the second display, just like maybe social media apps is the way I usually set it up.

And then I only work on one. I tried buying an extra wide curve display, hated it.

Jeff: Uh, I’ve always wanted to try one, but

Christina: I don’t like them.

Jeff: Yeah.

Christina: Well, for me, well for me it’s two things. One, it’s the, I don’t love the whole like, you know, thing or whatever, but the big thing honestly there, if you could give me, 'cause people are like, oh, you can get a really big 5K, 2K display. I’m like, that’s not a 5K display.

That is 2 27 inch, 1440 P displays. One, you know, ultra wide, which is great. Good for you. That’s not retina. And I’m a sicko Who [00:41:00] needs the, the pixel doubling? Like I wish that my eyes could not use that, but, but, but,

Jeff: that needs the pixel. Like was that the headline of your Reddit, uh,

Christina: no, no. It wasn’t, it wasn’t. But, but maybe it should be. Hi, I’m a sicko who only, um, fucks with, with, with, with, with, with, with retina displays. Ask me anything. Um, but no, but that’s a good point.

Brett: I think 5K Psycho is the

Christina: 5K Sicko is the po is the po title. I like that. I like that. No, what I’m thinking about doing and that’s great to know, Brett.

Um, this kind of reaffirms my thing.

Thunderbolt KVM and Display Preferences

Christina: So what’s nice about these monitors is that they come with like, built in like, um, Thunderbolt 5K VM. So, which is nice. So you could conceivably have multiple, you know, computers, uh, connected, you know, to to, to one monitor, which I really like. Um, I mean like, 'cause like look, I, I’ve bitched and moaned about the studio display, um, primarily for the price, but at the same time, if mine broke tomorrow and if I didn’t have any way to replace it, I’ve, I’ve also gone on record saying I would buy a new one immediately.

As mad as I am about a [00:42:00] lot of different things with that, that the built-in webcam is garbage. The, you know, the, the fact that there’s not a power button is garbage. The fact that you can’t use it with multiple inputs, it’s garbage. But it’s a really good display and it’s what I’m used to. Um, it’s really not any better than my LG Ultra fine from 2016.

But you know what? Whatever it is, what it is. Um. I, I am a 5K sicko, but being able to, um, connect my, my personal machine and my work machine at the same time to one, and then have my Windows slash Linux computer connected to another, I think that’s gonna be the scenario where I’m in. So I’m not gonna necessarily be in a place where I’m like, okay, I need to try to look at both of them across 2 32 inch displays.

'cause I think that that, like, that would be awesome. But I feel like that’s too much.

Brett: I would love a decent like Thunderbolt KVM setup that could actually swap like my hubs back and

Christina: Yes.

MacBook Pro and Studio Comparisons

Brett: Um, so, 'cause I, I have a studio and I have my, uh, Infor MacBook Pro [00:43:00] and I actually work mostly on the MacBook Pro. Um, but if I could easily dock it and switch everything on my desk over to it, I would, I would work in my office more often.

'cause honestly, the M four MacBook Pro is, it’s a better machine than the original studio was. Um, and I haven’t upgraded my studio to the latest, but, um, I imagine the new one is top notch.

Christina: Oh yeah. Yeah.

Brett: my, my other one, a couple years old now is already long in the tooth.

Christina: No, I mean, they’re still good. I mean, it’s funny, I saw that some YouTube video the other day where they were like, the best value MacBook you can get is basically a 4-year-old M1 max. And I was like, I don’t know about that guys. Like, I, I kind of disagree a little bit. Um, but the M1 max, which is I think is what is in the studio, is still a really, really good ship.

But to your point, like they’ve made those, um. You know, the, the, the new ones are still so good. Like, I have an M three max as my personal laptop, and [00:44:00] that’s kind of like the dog chip in the, in the m um, series lineup. So I kind of am regretful for spending six grand on that one, but it is what it is, and I’m like, I’m not, I’m not upgrading.

Um, I mean, maybe, maybe in, in next year if, if the M five Pro, uh, or M five max or whatever is, is really exceptional, maybe I’ll look at, okay, how much will you give me to, to trade it in? But even then, I, I, but I feel like I’m at that point where I’m like, it gets to a point where like it’s diminishing returns.

Um, but, uh, just in terms of my own budget. But, um, yeah, the, the new just info like pro or or max, whatever,

Brett: I have, I have an M four MacBook Pro sitting around that I keep forgetting to sell. Uh, it’s the one that I, it only had a 256 gigabyte hard drive,

Jeff: what happened to me when I bought my M1,

Brett: and I, and I regretted that enough that I just ordered another one. But, uh, for various reasons, I couldn’t just return the one I didn’t

Jeff: 'cause it was.[00:45:00]

Brett: so now I, now I have to sell it and I should sell it while it’s still a top of the line machine

Christina: Sell it before, sell, sell, sell, sell it before next month, um, or, or February or whenever they sell it before then the, the pros come out. 'cause right now the M five base is out, but the pros are not. So I think feel like you could still get most of your value for it, especially since it has very few battery cycles.

Be sure to put the battery cycles on your Facebook marketplace or eBay thing or whatever. Um, I bought my, uh, she won’t listen to this so she won’t know, but, um, they, there was a, a killer Cyber Monday deal, uh, for Best Buy where they had like a, the, the, the, so it’s several years old, but it was the, the M two MacBook Air, but the one that they upgraded to 16 gigs of Ram when Apple was like, oh, we have to have Apple Intelligence and everything, because they actually thought that they were actually gonna ship Apple Intelligence.

So they like went back and they, like, they, they, you know, retconned like made the base model MacBook Air, like 16 [00:46:00] gigs. Um, and, uh, anyway, it was, it was $600, um,

Jeff: still crazy.

Christina: which, which like even for like a, a, a 2-year-old machine or whatever, I was like, yeah, she, my sister, I think she’s on like, like a 2014 or older than that.

Like, like MacBook Air. She doesn’t even know where the MagSafe is. I don’t think she even knows where the laptop is. So she’s basically doing everything like on her phone and I’m like, okay, you need a laptop of some type, but at this point. I do feel strongly that like the, the, the $600 or, or, or actually I think it was $650, it was actually less, it is actually more expensive than what the, the, the Cyber Monday sale was, um, the M1, Walmart, MacBook Air.

I’m like, absolutely not like that is at this point, do not buy that. Right? Like, I, especially with eight gigs of ram, I’m, I’m like, it’s been, it’s five years old. It’s a, it was a great machine and it was great value for a long time. $200. Cool, right? Like, if you could get something like use and, and, and, and if you could replace the battery or, you know, [00:47:00] for, for, you know, not, not too much money or whatever.

Like, I, I, I could see like an argument to be made like value, right? But there’d be no way in hell that I would ever spend or tell anybody else to spend $650 on that new, but $600 for an M two with

Jeff: Now we’re talking.

Christina: which has the redesign brand new. I’m like, okay. Spend $150 more and you could have got the M four, um, uh, MacBook Air, obviously all around Better Machine.

But for my sister, she doesn’t need that,

Jeff: What do we have to do to put your sister in this M two MacBook

Christina: that, that, that, that, that, that’s exactly it. So I, I, I was, well, also, it was one of those things I was like, I think that she would rather me spend the money on toys for my nephew for Santa Claus than, than, uh, giving her like a, a processor upgrade. Um,

Jeff: Claus isn’t real.

Brett: Oh shit.

Jeff: Gotcha. Every year I spoil it for somebody. This year it was Christina and Brett. Sorry guys.

Brett: right. Well, can I tell you guys

Jeff: Yeah. [00:48:00] Brett Software.

Brett: two quick projects before we do

Jeff: Hold on. You don’t have to be quick 'cause you could call it

Brett: We’re already at 45 minutes and I want

Jeff: What I’m saying, skip GrAPPtitude. This is it?

Brett: okay.

Christina: us about Mark. Tell us about your projects.

Brett: So, so Mark three is, there’s a public, um, test flight beta link. Uh, if you go to marked app.com, not marked two app.com, uh, marked app.com. Uh, you, there’s a link in the, in the, at the top for

Christina: Join beta. Mm-hmm.

Brett: Um, and that is public and you can join it and you can send me feedback directly through email because, um, uh, uh, the feedback reporter sucks for test flight and you can’t attach files. And half the time they come through as anonymous feedback and I can’t even follow up on 'em. So email me. But, um, I’ll be announcing that on my blog soon-ish.

Um, right now there’s like [00:49:00] maybe a couple dozen, um, testers and I, it’s nice and small and I’m solving the biggest bugs right away. Um, so that’s been, that’s been big. Like Mark, even since we last talked has added. Do you remember Jeff when Merlin was on and he wanted to. He wanted to be able to manage his styles, um, and disable built-in styles.

There’s now a whole table based style manager where you

Jeff: saw that.

Brett: you can, you can reorder, including built-in styles. You can reorder, enable, disable, edit, duplicate. Um, it’s like a full, full fledged, um, style manager. And I just built a whole web app that is a style generator that gives you, um, automatic like rhythm calculations for your CSS and you can, you can control everything through like, uh, like UI fields instead of having to [00:50:00] write CSS.

Uh, but you can also o open up a very, I’ve spent a lot of time on the code mirror CSS editor in the web app. Uh, so, and it’s got live preview as you edit in the code mirror field. Um, so that’s pretty cool. And that’s built into marts. So if you go to style, um, generate style, it’ll load up a, a style generator for you.

Anyway, there’s, there’s a ton. I’m not gonna go into all the details, but, uh, anyone listening who uses markdown for anything, especially if you want ability to export to like Word and epub and advanced PDF export, um, join the beta. Let me know what you think. Uh, help me squash bugs. But the other thing, every time I push a beta for review before the new bug reports come in, I’ve been putting time into a tool.

Markdown Processor: Apex

Brett: I’m calling [00:51:00] Apex and um, I haven’t publicly announced this one yet, but I probably will by the time this podcast comes out.

Jeff: I mean, doesn’t this count?

Brett: It, it does. I’m saying like this, this might be a, you hear you heard it here first kind of thing, um, but if you go to github.com/tt sc slash apex, um, I built a, uh, pure C markdown processor that combines syntax from cram down GitHub flavored markdown, multi markdown maku, um, common mark.

And basically you can write syntax from any of those processors, including all of their special features, um, and in one document, and then use Apex in its unified mode, and it’ll just figure out what. All of your syntax is supposed to do. Um, so you can take, you can port documents from one platform to another [00:52:00] without worrying about how they’re gonna render.

Um, if I can get any kind of adoption with Apex, it could solve a lot of problems. Um, I built it because I want to make it the default processor in marked 'cause right now, you, you have to choose, you know, cram

Christina: Which one?

Brett: mark and, and choosing one means you lose something in order to gain something.

Um, so I wanted to build a universal one that brought together everything. And I added cool features from some extensions of other languages, such as if you have two lists in a row, normally in markdown, it’s gonna concatenate those into one list. Now you can put a carrot on a line between the two lists and it’ll break it into two lists.

I also added support for a. An extension to cram down that lets you put double uh, carrots inside a table cell and [00:53:00] create a row band. So like a cell that, that expands it, you rows but doesn’t expand the rest of the row. Um, so you can do cell spans and row spans and it has a relaxed table version where you don’t have to have an alignment row, which is, uh, sometimes we just wanna make quickly table.

You make two lines. You put some pipes in. This will, if there’s no alignment row, it will generate a table with just a table body and table data cells in no header. It also allows footers, you can add a footer to a table by using equals in the separator line. Um, it, it’s,

Jeff: This is very civilized,

Brett: it is.

Christina: is amazing,

Brett: So where Common Mark is extremely strict about things, um, apex is extremely permissive.

Jeff: also itty bitty things like talk about the call out boxes from like

Brett: oh yeah, it, it can handle call out syntax from Obsidian and Bear and Xcode Playgrounds. [00:54:00] Um, and it incorporates all of Mark’s syntax for like file includes and even renders like auto scroll pauses that work in marked and some other teleprompter situations. Um, it uses file ude syntax from multi markdown, like, which is just like a curly brace and, uh, marked, which is, uh, left like a double left, uh, angle bracket and then different.

Brackets to surround a file name and it handles IA writer file inclusion where you just type a forward slash and then the name of a file and it automatically detects if that file is an image or source code or markdown text, and it will import it accordingly. And if it’s a CSV file, it’ll generate a table from it automatically. It’s, it’s kind of nuts. I, it’s kind of nuts. I could not have done this [00:55:00] without copilot. I, I am very thankful for copilot because my C skills are not, would not on their own, have been up to this task. I know enough to bug debug, but yeah, a lot of these features I got a big hand from copilot on.

Jeff: This is also Brett. This is some serious Brett Terpstra. TURPs Hard

Christina: Yeah, it is. I was gonna say, this is like

Jeff: and also that’s right. Also, if your grandma ever wrote you a note and it, and though you couldn’t really read it, it really well, that renders perfectly

Christina: Amazing. No, I was gonna say this is like, okay, so Apex is like the perfect name 'cause this is the apex of Brett.

Jeff: Yes. Apex of Brett.

Christina: That’s also that, that’s, that’s not an alternate episode title Apex of Brett. Because genuinely No, Brett, like I am, I am so stunned and impressed. I mean, you all, you always impressed me like you are the most impressive like developer that I, that I’ve ever known.

But you, this is incredible. And, and this, I, I love this [00:56:00] because as you said, like common Mark is incredibly strict. This is incredibly permissive. But this is great. 'cause there are those scenarios where you might have like, I wanna use one feature from one thing or one from another, or I wanna combine things in various ways, or I don’t wanna have to think about it, you know?

Brett: I aals, I forgot to mention I aals inline attribute list, which is a crammed down feature that lets you put curly brackets after like a paragraph and then a colon and then say, dot call out inside the curly brackets. And then when it renders the markdown, it creates that paragraph and adds class equals call out to the paragraph.

Um, and in, in Cramon you can apply these to everything from list items to list to block quotes. Like you can do 'em for spans. You could like have one after, uh, link syntax and just apply, say dot external to a link. So the IAL syntax can add IDs classes and uh, arbitrary [00:57:00] attributes to any element in your markdown when it renders to HTML.

And, uh, and Apex has first class support for I aals. Was really, that was, that

Christina: that was really hard,

Brett: I wrote it because I wanted, I wanted multi markdown, uh, for my prose writing, but I really missed the als.

Christina: Yes. Okay. Because see, I run into this sort of thing too, right? Because like, this is a problem like that. I mean, it’s a very niche problem, um, that, that, you know, people who listen to this podcast probably are more familiar with than other types of people. But like, when you have to choose your markdown processor, which as you said, like Brett, like that can be a problem.

Like, like with, with using Mark or anything else, you’re like, what am I giving up? What do I have? And, and like for me, because I started using mul, you know, markdown, um, uh, largely because of you, um, I think I was using it, I knew about it before you, but largely because of, of, of you, like multi markdown has always been like kind of my, or was historically my flavor of choice.

It has since shifted to being [00:58:00] GitHub, labor bird markdown. But that’s just because the industry has taken that on, right? But there were, you know, certain things like in like, you know, multi markdown that work a certain way. And then yeah, there are things in crammed down. There are things in these other things in like, this is just, this is awesome.

This

Brett: It is, the whole thing is built on top of C mark, GFM, which is GitHub’s port of common mark with the GitHub flavored markdown

Christina: Right.

Brett: Um, and I built, like, I kept that as a sub-module, totally clean, and built all of this as extensions on top of Cmar, GFM, which, you know, so it has full compatibility with GitHub and with Common Merck by out, like outta the box.

And then everything else is built on top of that. So it, uh, it covers, it covers all the bases. You’ll love it

Christina: I’m so excited. No, this is awesome. And I

Brett: blazing fast. It can render, I have a complex document that, that uses all of its features and it can render it in [00:59:00] 0.006 seconds.

Christina: that’s awesome.

Jeff: Awesome.

Christina: That’s so cool. No, this is great. And yeah, I, and I think that honestly, like this is the sort of thing like if, yeah, if you can eventually get this to like be like the engine that powers like mark three, like, that’ll be really slick, right? Because then like, yeah, okay, I can take one document and then just, you know, kind of, you know, wi with, with the, you know, ha have, have the compatibility mode where you’re like, okay, the unified mode or whatever you’re calling it, be like, okay, it’ll render all of it.

Like maybe having, you know, a a, a caveat on there that’s like, okay, you might run into some breaking things if there’s some things that conflict or whatever. So like, keep that, you know in mind. But the, the less people have to think about what, like

Brett: well, yeah,

Christina: marked an inch and

Brett: wanna open, you wanna open documents that, that are written for GitHub. You wanna open documents that you created in obsidian. You wanna open your bear documents like every, every source you have has slightly different syntax. So one. [01:00:00] One processor to rule them all kind of makes sense.

Christina: It totally does. And I think, I mean, you know, and I, I don’t know like how useful this would be for a lot of people, but like I’m, I am imagining a scenario, like you’re talking about this, like, if you have a website and like you’re wanting to, you know, render things and, and not having to have, you know, the, the different c files for each processor, right.

And then have a different, like, you know, um, you know, send, you know, thing at the top to basically, I guess like define it, right? Like to basically just have that kind of bundled in, like with, with your blog editor or, or whatever. Like you can be like, all right, whatever, whatever. Now I can know whatever markdown file I’m throwing in here, it’s gonna render the way that it’s intended to.

Brett: I’m thinking about writing a Jekyll extension to make it a default renderer for Jekyll as well, because it can handle pretty much like, I have to see how it handles liquid syntax in com in compatibility with Jekyll. But anyway, yeah.

Christina: No, but that, but that, that, but that could be cool too. 'cause [01:01:00] to your point, like if you have that, like if it’s Jekyll or some other, you know, you know, um, a blog engine or whatever with whether it’s, you know, static site thing or WordPress or whatever, like, then you could just be like, okay, I could take this thing from obsidian, or I could take this thing from something else and, and drop it in and have it render and know that it’s gonna render the right way.

And I don’t have to worry, do I have a plugin installed? Am I formatting this the right way? Like, whatever the case may be, or if, if this takes off, right? Like for, for LLMs, if they’re, you know, coming up with stuff, you know, to go in whatever, you know, JavaScript framework, you know, you want, like not having to worry about, okay, get another thing to, to, to bundle on top of something.

Brett: I get so many support requests these days from people who copy pasted chat, GPTs, markdown, output, and chat. GPD honestly doesn’t really understand markdown. Um, and, but they get this, they, they didn’t write it. They just assume it will work, and they have no idea what processor it needs. So they don’t even know what choice to [01:02:00] make because they weren’t really part of generating the syntax to begin

Christina: Oh yeah, that’s a great point. Yeah. Which, which, yeah, it’s a problem, right? Because it then it’s gonna be with whatever chat GBT saw, and in most cases it is probably gonna be GitHub flavored markdown. 'cause that’s what most of things are. But it might be older, right? It depends on what it is. It may, it’s crammed down.

Maybe it’s, you know, something else may,

Brett: Maybe it’s bar ruku

Christina: yeah, maybe it’s, maybe it’s something that made up,

Brett: Che GPT. Yeah. Sometimes makes up, uh, its own syntax. And people will be like, why doesn’t this work? And I’ll be like, I have never seen this

Christina: this does not actually exist,

Brett: I don’t think this is.

Christina: This, this is not a valid markdown

Brett: if you can show me where this does work, I can help you figure out how to make it work in Marked, but I don’t think it works anywhere.

Christina: No, it probably doesn’t. 'cause what’s happening is that it’s, you know, it’s generating things based on what it thinks the rules are, but it’s not being given anything. Although now this makes me think this would be a cool thing, like to use with Claude skills or something where you could maybe point Claude skills to this [01:03:00] library and basically be like, render, you know, markdown that I’m requesting you and render using this library.

Right. So then you, then, then, then you could know like definitively, like on a, on a, you know, reproducible basis that it’s going to, to do that. But like, like, use this processor. But that way you don’t have to have like separate rules and everything set up for each, for

Brett: it has a, it has a full CAPI. And can, and the build system will generate Xcode frameworks for you. Um, so this could be easily incorporated into, you know, your favorite, uh, app. You could ask them to like, oh, can we switch from Carbon Meck to Apex? And then I can use all my syntax in your app. Yeah,

Christina: No, I think that would be sick.

Brett: I’m pretty excited about it.

I, I hope it, I hope it takes off. We’ll see.

Christina: great. Yeah. When, when, when you’re, once you have a blog post and stuff on this, um, you should submit this to Hacker News, [01:04:00] or, or let me know and I’ll, I’ll submit it to

Brett: I’m gonna, I’m gonna send a copy to Gruber and see what he thinks he Gruber is very, um, particular about what markdown flavors he will endorse, and I’ve never quite figured out. Where the line is for him. Like he, he, he loves GitHub flavor markdown. He hates multi markdown. Um, and like there’s reasoning behind it isn’t always, um, consistent.

And, and so I, he may, he may hate Apex, he may think it’s worth mentioning on his huge social platforms. We’ll find out anyway. Anyway. All right. Do you guys wanna fit in a quick aptitude or are we skipping it?

Christina: If we wanna, if we can go real fast, we can do rapid lightning round, I think that’d

Brett: Yeah, rapid lightning round. I’ll kick it off. I found this app a while ago [01:05:00] called Indigo, and it is a bare metal map app for Mac where like for serving virtual websites and you load it up, you create a stack, which is like Nginx or Apache, and then PHP, um, and you can add MySQL or post post Postgres and like you build like whatever stack you need for an app and then you add a virtual website to it and then it just serves it up on your machine.

And you can go to your, your local virtual website, I, uh, URL and see your directory served. And like, this is what I used to do with M and virtual host X, neither of which are working for me very well anymore. Uh, VIR virtual host is unsupported at this point, and map is kind of. It just doesn’t work for me anymore.

Christina: And, and, and it’s been kind of an abandoned wear state, like [01:06:00] where they continue to charge money for it for years. And I haven’t looked into it since the Apple silicon transition, but they didn’t handle it. But even before that transition, I kind of, and I paid for it for years, and I was like, I’m not paying for, and I was like, I’m not paying for upgrades anymore.

Like you’re not actually actively developing stuff, and I’m new to.

Brett: oh, go ahead. Sorry.

Christina: I was gonna say, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve tried other solutions, like there was local, there are a few other things, but none that do what you’re talking about where you could just, you know, point it at a local URL and have it served

Brett: Yeah. Um, and Indigo, you can run for free. It will constantly remind you about upgrading, but I have not paid for it yet. Um, I’m waiting to see how active development remains. Uh, if. If, because it kind of, it started strong and then it kind of plateaued. And I’m not, I’m not a hundred percent sure it’s gonna last yet.

Uh, it’s the best solution I have for now. And if it looks like development will continue, I will gladly pay for it.

Christina: Totally, totally. Yeah. That was gonna be my [01:07:00] question for you. 'cause I looked at this, uh, I, sorry, I know we’re supposed to go short, but, 'cause I, but I, but I was looking at this when, when, um, I was reading the notes in advance and I was like, is development still active? Because I’ll use it for free, but before I drop down 80 bucks a year or whatever it is they want, I wanna actually know that this is being actively worked on.

Brett: Yeah. We’ll, we’ll, we’ll update, I’ll update you in a few months and see if they, uh, if they’re updating, but, all right. That’s it.

Jeff: Awesome. I’ll do my lightning round. It’s the same thing I always do, which is come up with something that I, I used, uh, five years ago, but I’m using again. So I was doing a writing project for work. It was really complex. I was making a bunch of tabs in, in Google Docs, which by the way, generally I love the feature, but what it’s not as scripter, and it was such a complex thing I was trying to work on, and it was like this client that has.

Like a ridiculous amount of like, frameworks, language, and uh, and I needed to be able to move it around, whatever. And I’m like, this happens to me every couple years. I’m like, this sucks. I’m having such a hard time.

Scrivener and Writing Tools

Jeff: I was like, oh, fucking Scrivener. So I opened up [01:08:00] Scrivener. I have no idea what’s changed in Scrivener 'cause I use it the same way every time.

Um, but God bless Scrivener. And I think what I’m gonna do this time, one of my new favorite things to use AI for is to take a change log when I haven’t used something in like two years. Throw the change, log in and being like, give me five things I need to try with very blatant steps. So maybe I need to do Scrivener.

But anyway, it remains, there’s nothing, there’s nothing else. I mean, I know there’s people that will say, you could do this, this, this, but for me there’s nothing else. And, uh, and also works with the new marked in extra special ways as I imagine, uh, much like my grandma’s handwriting.

Brett: Yeah,

Christina: And,

Brett: Mark’s. Mark Scrivener integration is completely rewritten. All native can handle all kinds of new, uh, document formats, uh, in a way that you don’t have to think about. You just drag your Scribner file on and it should just render. But

Christina: Amazing.

Brett: I would love it if people would test that out

Jeff: I’ll test it out today actually, 'cause I’m using it.

Christina: Amazing. Yeah, no, I think [01:09:00] I, I think, um, I think, um, what, what was I gonna say? Uh, yeah, Scribner is, is great. Um, I, I have bitched about this before. I think last time we talked about this, I wish that the way that they handled, like cloud kind of stuff,

Jeff: Oh my God,

Christina: was better, but, but like,

Jeff: collaborate a little

Christina: yeah.

Like, or, or just have like a built in like way of, you know, the, like the, the, the, the way that it works right now, it’s not ideal, but, but like, it is such a good app and, and I am like very happy with, with, with what they’ve done. And I, I just looked back like, I bought 3.0, I think as soon as 3.0 came out, that was in 2018.

Like,

Jeff: Yeah,

Christina: I, I almost feel bad that that was, it was like May 21st, 2018 was the last time I bought it. And I think before that I bought it in. Like 2014, um, or, or, or 2013. So I, anyway, they, they provide updates for probably too long. Um, but, but Scribner’s awesome.

Jeff: yeah,

Brett: I don’t know how to [01:10:00] pronounce the developer’s name, but I think it’s ioa IOA.

Christina: yeah,

Jeff: you have them on? Uh, Systematic, I remember that was how I learned about Scrivener.

Christina: yeah. Literature and, yeah, literature and, and Latte is the company name, but I don’t know how to, how you pronounce them. The, the, the developer’s name, but No, but they’re, um, but they’re, they’re, they’re great people. And, um,

Brett: Yeah. Very cool. And they’ve given me Scribner for free for years now, so I could work on marked integration,

Christina: Amazing. Amazing. Well, and like, honestly, they do great stuff. Uh, one thing just real quickly, I, I know we’re supposed to be super fast, but this was annoying. Um, uh, uh, uh, Kirkham, uh, mle, um, who, uh, I think a, a number of us know who, uh, who writes for the Scribner blog. Um, and he was like, he’s been a long time, like, like Mac, um, uh, writer, I think he wrote, wrote for like Mac Tips and, and Mac World and places like that,

Brett: tidbits, I

Christina: tidbits he had.

Yeah. Um, a great guy. Um, he, uh, this sucks. Uh, they had to like have a whole thing on their blog vault. Why do I see AI prompts in my Scrivener projects on Mac? There’s no AI [01:11:00] with Scrivener at all, but, but.

Brett: tools.

Christina: Correct, correct. And so, and, but, but understandably, many people of the core Scribner audience are gonna be very, very sensitive to seeing any AI shit.

And so simply by having these, because if you’re using a, if you build a native app, Mac app the right way, and you use like, you know, native like the text fields, then like the, the, the bullshit AI writing stuff that is, look, if it were useful, I wouldn’t even be mad at it, but it’s not useful. So that’s where I get pissed off.

Like, honestly, that’s where my consternation comes in. But, uh, but um, someone in a group chat that I’m in was like, imagine having to like do a blog post to like, explain why your operating system is doing this and not your app.

Jeff: yeah.

Christina: Like, that’s, that’s, that’s, that, that’s, that’s gross. Anyway. Um. Uh, but, but they’re, they’re, they’re great people.

Um, and I will be quick this time. I promise I’ve made us go long. But, uh, my pick is, uh, is Helium.

Helium Browser and Privacy Features

Christina: We’ve talked a bunch about, uh, alternative web browsers. And Helium [01:12:00] computer is, uh, where you can get this, it is in, um, beta right now for, for for Mac. Um, and I, and I think they’re gonna be coming to other platforms, but it’s basically kind of a privacy focused.

Um, a chrome fork and, um, or, or chromium browser is not really a fork. Um, and the whole thing, like it has built-in, like you block origin, it has, uh, ka e as the default, uh, search engine. But, um, like so there’s no adware, no bloat, no noise. It’s, it’s fully open source. Um, the people who make this are the same people who make Cobalt tools, which are like the web-based tools for converting anything like, like from any format to any format that is not actually just a total FF eg front end.

Like the way that they do the YouTube video conversion doesn’t actually use YY 2D LP. Um, it, it’s actually pretty, pretty cool, but I think I’ve mentioned cobalt tools on, uh, on over tire before. Uh, yeah, no, but helium, uh, computer, I really like it. The thing I really like about it is that it has, um, the, this, this bangs feature where, uh, which is something that, that, uh, Kagy can do.

[01:13:00] But, um, I think that arc let you do this too, where you can basically do like, you know, um, bang, you know, like, um, uh, K or bang kagy to search kagy bang gh to search GitHub bang W

Brett: duck, duck. Go.

Christina: Yeah, basically it has all those things, but it has support for, for more of them too. So you can choose which ones you wanna install, but like, that’s built in by default, which I think is really nice.

Um, and anyway, I, I, I like it. Like we, we’ve, we’ve talked about, um, alternative browsers here quite a bit in the past. Um, it is available, no auto updates yet for Windows, and there’s an app image for Linux, but it’s. The primary way that this is, I think, being actively developed is on, um, Mac Os, but it’s, it’s, um, it’s based on, on Google chromium, but then they’re adding in like other stuff to it.

But anyway, um, for people who are looking at wanting to check out a, a, you know, a Chrome compatible alternative browser, um,

Brett: that doesn’t support bra politics. Sure.

Christina: Right, exactly. Exactly.

Bing Delisting Incident

Brett: Um, side note, um, I we’re, I know we’re [01:14:00] so far over, but, um, I, uh, a month ago got delisted from Bing, um, like my website just, there were zero results from Brett turre.com, which also meant that I didn’t show up on Duck dot go anymore 'cause that’s where they source their results from.

And um, and I had no idea why this has happened. And, um, they still had the bang turp. Uh, like I have my own bang

Jeff: That’s right.

Brett: dot go. Um, and that, that still worked, but my website was no longer there. Um, so I started doing all the debugging. I found, uh, six or seven other bloggers that had had the same thing happen, and some of them got an explanation, most of them didn’t.

I finally got a response from Bing Webmaster Tools and they said they were going to review it and it would take a couple weeks. It took a couple weeks, and then they sent me an email that said, oh, you’re good. [01:15:00] And all of a sudden I was back and they explained nothing. I have no idea why I was suddenly delisted and summarily restored,

Jeff: Wow,

Brett: um, but the nightmare is over.

I’m back now.

Jeff: Welcome back, Brett.

Brett: Thank you.

Christina: back.

Brett: Thanks everybody.

Jeff: You should also get some sleep.

Christina: Yes. Get some sleep.

Brett: Get some

Jeff: to talk to you all.

Christina: Yeah, likewise, likewise. See you guys all later. Bye.

Jeff: Bye.