Projects and Pitt-falls

Gang Back Together

Christina: [00:00:00] What’s that? Do you see a podcast update in your feed? Well that’s because you’re back on, on Overtired and, uh, and I’m Christina Warren and I’m joined by, uh, Jeff Severns Guntzel and Brett Terpstra. What do you know? The whole gang is back together. Overtired, everybody what

Jeff: Hi everybody.

Brett: I need a, we need a party sound. We need a

Christina: we do. We need a soundboard. We need a soundboard and we need a, a way to be like what Gangs all here. Some sort of a like a either a a we need a horn. That’s what we need. We need one of those. Those horns they play at at at football games.

Jeff: would like that very much.

Brett: or that like B.

Christina: exactly.

Jeff: yeah,

Brett: That would really wake people up.

Christina: It really would. And, and especially, um, all of us.

'cause I we’re recording this earlier than we ever do. Brett’s been up for a really long time and, uh, I think Jeff is probably like raring to go, but I’m like, I, well now

Jeff: raring to go, but I’m warming [00:01:00] up.

Christina: Yeah, I, I, I’ve been up since like five 30, so I’m okay too, but yeah.

Brett: I wrote an entire shortcuts in shortcut intense interface for my new app this morning, and it’s actually working. I’ve never written for shortcuts before.

Christina: Well, Ooh, we will, yeah, you gotta talk to us more about that 'cause I wanna hear more about that.

Mental Health Corner

Christina: Um, but first I think we should probably do, um, because it’s been a while since we’ve all been together, we should probably do a little bit of a mental health corner.

Brett: yeah, Who wants to kick that off? Okay, fine. I will.

Jeff: health. Mental health. Silence.

Back Pain Diagnosis

Brett: I, uh, I, I, my sleep has gotten a little worse than it was before when I told you it was bad. Um, I’m, now, I’m back down to like five hours a night and I just wake up at like 2:00 AM. And like I go to bed by eight or nine and I get up at [00:02:00] 2:00 AM every morning and I just cannot, for the life of me fall back asleep.

And for like the first hour I’m up, I’m not even really awake. Um, I’m just kind of sitting on the couch staring at my computer and not be, not able to do anything After about an hour. Um. I, I, I’ll get some coffee, I’ll take my meds and like then it’s kind of like most people’s, like maybe 10:00 AM 11:00 AM um, by, by like 3:00 AM but it’s still wearing me down.

Um, I got, so I’ve had back pain, um, for a while now. Uh, I can’t stand up for more than about five minutes and I can’t walk for more than three to five minutes, which has really put a dent in my, um, ability to exercise. And, um, so I finally got, I got an MRI [00:03:00] done, and they. Diagnose me with stenosis, which I think is kind of a, a broad term, but like a couple of the discs in my lower back have collapsed and, um, they, they, they think I can be treated with, uh, with shots and not surgery.

Um, so I’m hoping, I’m hoping to get that figured out because, okay, so right now, uh, we, we always go on walks in the wildlife refuge, um, like the wetlands refuge near us, and I love it. We, we see so much cool stuff there and I hadn’t really been able to, but what I found was this little, it’s like. Folded up, it’s like two feet tall, uh, camp chair and it, it’s like a camp stool.

And so I carry that with us while we walk and then like every three minutes I’ll like have to set it up on [00:04:00] the side of the trail sit. And if I sit for two minutes, the pain goes away, I can then walk again immediately. Um, but like after, after three to five minutes, like my back freezes up and I, like, I literally, I can’t move anymore.

Um, so this little, uh, take carrying a chair and doing it in three minutes stints, um, has at least allowed me to get out and get some green time. But that’s kinda where I’m at.

Jeff: What does this little chair look like? Uh

Brett: It’s blue

Jeff: huh.

Brett: and it has four legs and it’s can canvas.

Jeff: is it like an adorable little camp chair that you’re supposed to be able to like

Brett: I think it’s a toddler’s ch camp chair.

Jeff: Excellent. This is the detail I

Brett: like, it’s smaller than my butt. Like I’m perching on it, but it’s enough to like get my back, uh, into feeling. Okay. And it’s not too heavy to like carry[00:05:00]

Jeff: Show art, but the art, the art is you perching. Just to be really clear.

Brett: Yes. My, my 280 pounds pound perched on a two foot camp stool, it’ll be great.

Jeff: Wow. Well, I’m glad there’s something like some kind of thing

Brett: Yeah, no, it’s actually really good. It’s really good to get the stenosis diagnosis and 'cause for a long time I just assumed because I gained weight, my, my back wouldn’t work anymore, which was depressing. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I’ve been this heavy before and I have not had this pain.

And even after my first like 50 pound sudden weight gain, I didn’t have back pain. So it didn’t make sense that my body just couldn’t handle it, uh, like something else had to be going on. So it was actually much like any diagnosis, I think, um, other than, you know, terminal illness, but for like A [00:06:00] DHD or stenosis or any like mental health condition, it’s a relief to get a diagnosis and find out you weren’t crazy, you weren’t making things up.

So yeah, I’m, I’m grateful.

Christina: No, I completely like, can, can relate to that. 'cause when I, like with my back, well my cervical spine, um, it was kind of a similar thing. Obviously mine was more acute and it was a different scenario because I got, um, like the, you know, diagnosis relatively quickly, although it still felt like it took longer than, than I wanted it to, to, to get my MRIs and whatnot.

Um, but it was similar to you. It was like kind of a relief to be like, oh, okay, so you have like a major problem. This isn’t just you being a wimp and,

Brett: Yeah, exactly.

Christina: exhilarating pain. Right. Like excruciating pain. Right. And, and just even having that, even knowing, okay, I don’t love that I have to go through [00:07:00] this whole thing.

Um, I’m, I’m still like relieved to have a diagnosis and a plan forward.

Dental Insurance Racket

Brett: Oh, and also I, so I’m on state. Healthcare, and that includes, um, Delta Dental, but it’s this weird version of Delta Dental that nobody in my town accepts. Um, so I have to, I have to drive 45 minutes to get dental care and even then they can’t, he can’t do root canals or anything. And I needed two root canals and that would’ve involved driving two and a half hours or three hours and then going back to the 45 minute away place.

And so what I did was I took the extra money I had saved outside of my, like, nest egg savings, but like my working savings. And I paid for a year of actual Delta Dental, um, and started going to a place [00:08:00] just really close to me and, um. It turns out that the best dental health insurance is still shit like it.

I don’t know how much dental work you guys get done, but it is,

Christina: it’s, it is crappy.

Brett: it’s a, it’s, it’s a racket. And I actually watched a YouTube video on why dental insurance is a scam. And it like interviewed Dennis who actually take these like Delta Dental and the Medicaid dentists. Um, and it is truly a scam. And what I found, and this is much the same experience, uh, Christina talked about with her, um, MRII think it was that you did a cash pay.

Um, I talked to the dentist and I said, do you have a cash paid discount? And he’s like, oh yeah. And basically. I can just pay cash and do everything for about 60% of the normal cost, and that is better than what [00:09:00] Delta does for me in most cases. Plus, I need so much work that my $2,000 cap with Delta is gone.

Christina: Well, I was, I was gonna say like, so when I joined Microsoft, Microsoft used to have really good. Dental insurance, um, respectively speaking as, as good as it can be. But there were still, you know, caps on how much work would be done. But I found like a good person to go to.

'cause I had an incident, um, about a year after I moved to Seattle, maybe less than that, where um, I had to have an emergency root canal and like that sucked. Um, like I went into a normal dentist. She was like, this is what you need. And then I had to like, take an Uber, like over to a guy and see him like that day at like 5:00 PM and I’m like, you know, all like drugged up and, and getting the root canal.

And that was not great. And I needed a lot of, of, of work done. Um, and so we split it over like she was a really good dentist and so we split it over. We were like, I was coming close to. The, the end of the calendar year. So she was like, okay, we’re gonna do all of this work and then we will start the next year [00:10:00] when things go forward.

And like she knew how to play the system and was like a really good dentist. Well then Micro, then I went to GitHub. GitHub used, um, you know, uh, Delta Dental. And, and that can vary based on plan. Microsoft is apparently on them too. Google also had them on a slightly different plan, and it’s like you never know what you’re getting.

And yeah, to your point, because if you need a lot of work done, if you have anything specialized, if you’re, you’re lucky if you get the right plan and you can see a provider in your area, great. But if you don’t, to your point, it is often, this is just fucked up. Like, especially if you’re having to pay out of pocket for it anyway.

If it’s part of your employer, you know, benefits, maybe it’s a little different, but it’s like even then it can still wind up being less expensive to just pay the cash stuff than whatever your deductibles are, which have a cap anyway. And, and, and, and, and then, yeah, the, the, the way that the, the Medicaid or, or even insurance pricing works, stuff that they might charge you a very nominal fee for, for like a cleaning or whatever is, or a cavity fill [00:11:00] is gonna be, you know, they’re gonna bill insurance like three or four times that

Brett: Right, exactly. So I pay, I pay like 800 bucks for a year of Delta, and that gives me basically $2,000 to work with, plus whatever price they can negotiate. Um, but like you said, like they, they bill three times. Um, so like what still comes out of my like $2,000 pot, um, is higher than I would’ve paid with

Christina: If you just paid cash, if you just had an $800 budget, or if you got like, yeah, that’s the thing. Okay. This is an AI app that somebody should build. And I’m saying this hoping that maybe something the audience will, or maybe one of us could vibe code it, because this seems like this would be a relatively easy calculator to do with like certain providers if they, if they, you know, list their things where you could like run the costs and be like, okay, this is, I’m gonna put in this number.

This is what my, you know, provider’s fees are. This is what my [00:12:00] insurance thing is. Um,

Brett: what my cash pay

Christina: this is what my cash pay is. Is it cheaper for me to spend $800 a year on Delta Dental or to just pay cash directly with my, my dentist?

Brett: Yeah. Have you as I’ve, as I’ve said to people who have pitched ideas to me in the past, you’re talking about a spreadsheet?

Christina: Yes. It is a spreadsheet to be completely out. Yes. But I can now use cloud code to, to to, to, you know, figure out the formula for me is the real thing.

Brett: Yeah. There you go. All right. Who’s up?

Post Surge Recovery

Jeff: Dr. To, um, I can talk, uh, uh, I’m, I mean, I’m doing really well. Uh, I we’re a couple months past, or, you know, a couple months past the operation Metro surge stuff here in January and February, in a little bit of December, but really January. And that was, I’d never kind of experienced like a, a full [00:13:00] taxing of every single person and kind of person I knew and which was amazing.

Um, and, uh, and it took a minute when things settled here, um, to, for everybody to kind of figure out what. How to just even enter into the world every day because everything had been driven by what was happening on a almost hourly to hourly basis for, for some time. And, um, and so I kind of moved through that, that period, which was like quite a sort of come down, uh, of adrenaline and, and amygdala sparking.

Um, and, and have kind of smoothed a little bit. And, um, and I’m just doing well. I’m having a nice, a nice goal of it right now.

Christina: Good. Great to hear.

Brett: I, I guess that everything’s relative. Right?

Jeff: Yeah. Everything’s relative. Yeah. Yeah. But I think I would call this a nice go of it, uh, even outside the context of comparing [00:14:00] to, to Operation Metro Surge.

Brett: that’s, that’s, I, I’m happy for you. That’s awesome.

Jeff: I think actually the last time I was on the podcast was with you, Christina, in January right after we had had a raid in our alley, which was even before the surge

Christina: You before the big surge, even before

Jeff: of an early start.

Christina: I was gonna say even before, like I, I, I don’t even know if, if, if the, the, the murder had happened. Um,

Jeff: not at all. In fact, we only had 100 extra ice agents here at the time and within a couple of weeks there’d be a woman in front of my house, uh, being pulled out of her car 'cause she was following ice agents and throwing me her phone as she gets tossed into a, into a fucking ice truck. And like it was just, everything happened so fast and so slowly all at the same time.

And, and obviously there’s still all sorts of stuff going on, but it is indisputably not what it was in January and February.

Brett: I was gonna ask you about that. 'cause like the total number of deportations is only slightly [00:15:00] lower right now than it was during the surge. Um, and they, they removed, they added like, what, 3000 agents and they removed like 800 of them. So,

Jeff: they’ve removed way more than

Brett: Hey, have they

Jeff: oh, yeah. We’re down to, I haven’t, I don’t wanna say the numbers because I haven’t looked at them. We’re, we’re back down to like the high hundreds and we, our baseline is like 1 25.

Brett: Okay.

Jeff: Yeah. You can tell. Um, it’s, yeah, you can tell. And I, and I’ve been down to the WPO Federal building a a few times, um, which is where ICE was kind of headquartered and there’s just the level of activity there is very low.

Um, they had some new vehicles come in at one point about a month ago, but mostly those are replacing rentals that they were using. So it wasn’t like people took it as kind of an indication that they were, you know, staffing up or suiting up again. But it was really just kind of replacing their, their really weird, like sort of duct tape together invasion.

Um, it’s kinda like in Iraq when they decided they were gonna [00:16:00] actually armor the Humvees, it was kind of like a little bit of a switch of, of vehicles. Um. Yeah, it’s much different. And like, you know, all the people either in my life or in my community that were in hiding or not, I mean, for the most part, not in hiding anymore vulnerable folks and undocumented folks.

And, um, so it’s like, it’s qualitatively and nervous, systemly different

Brett: Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff: for everybody and still sucks. And there’s still a risk and a threat and, and a horror. And a terror.

Brett: Yeah, down here in southern Minnesota, I have not gotten a call to do a food delivery or a grocery delivery for, yeah, a couple months. Um, so yeah, I guess it really has calmed down across the state.

Jeff: Yeah. Thank God. I mean, who knows what they’re up to that isn’t as visible, but thank God

Brett: exactly.

Jeff: over. So yeah, I, I mean it’s, and I actually just had my, my brother’s been in town and every time someone kind of comes to visit, they wanna like. You know, kind of hear or take in what the thing was and you start describing it again, and [00:17:00] now it just, I mean, it felt like a dream at the time.

It just felt like, how could this be real? But you were just so in it, like every single person, like you said, Brett, like people were doing grocery deliveries or people were, you know, cooking food for the people that were kind of on the front lines, or you were following ice, or you were dispatching people to follow ice, whatever.

It was like every. Single person I could think of as doing something. And uh, and, and so when you try to describe it now, when you look around, especially in my neighborhood where they were all over, um, it it, it seems like, was this, was this real, um, like, was it even real because like, I don’t know, like the end here.

'cause this could go on forever, but I don’t know if any of you saw the footage that went around of a high school called Roosevelt High School, where, uh, where Bovino showed up and there was all this crazy shit and the, the footage of this, um, went around the country and like it was, you know, reposted by freaking everybody that was my son’s school in my neighborhood.

And, and so like, it was just this constant thing of like, bovino at my son’s school, binos at my gas station. Like, it was just [00:18:00] utterly insane. And now, and, and every street felt almost, you could feel ice on the streets. Like you would see ghost cars where they had taken people or whatever. You could like, feel 'em on the streets.

And so you walk around, you walk around the same streets now, and it’s just birds and kids playing and you’re just like, did that, was that real?

Brett: There, there was a tow truck driver that was interviewed who had taken it upon himself to tow those ghost cars for free back to their origin. Um, and just like leave them for people.

Jeff: at least, or he would take them in and not charge if you came in for them. And it’s, and that’s just it. Everybody, everybody. It was incredible. It was incredible.

Christina: It’s crazy.

Jeff: Yeah. All

Christina: I hope, I genuinely hope that they’ve lost interest and, and have moved on to other things.

Brett: Like Seattle.

Christina: yeah. Well, I mean, Seattle is obviously a very different situation and, and that had a, a longstanding, I think, impact. Um, and, and I, I, I. I’ve said this, I said this at the time, people who made that really bad were the [00:19:00] activists who came in outside the so-called activists and putting that in quotation marks who came in, who didn’t even live in the city and agitated things and made things way worse than, than they, than it should have been.

Um, but yeah, but I hope that it’s like Seattle, that it just kind of falls like the, the government doesn’t come back and, and continue this, you know, reign of terror.

Jeff: Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

Surgery And Withdrawal

Christina: Um, well, I’ll, I’ll be quick. So I, I had surgery since I guess the last time I was on,

Jeff: Sure did.

Christina: that went well. Um, the surgery itself, I’m still in some pain, um, in my shoulder after the surgery, uh, which was not like you were fi fixing my cervical spine. But, um, they, uh, I guess however it worked, like I, I think as muscular, um, I, I’ve been going to to to PT for the last few weeks.

Um, but I still having some, some shoulder pain. That’s, that’s getting better. Um, the hardest thing was actually some of the medication stuff. So [00:20:00] I, uh, gabapentin, um, I know it’s a lifesaver for a lot of people. I don’t have a good reaction to it. Like I’m one of those people. Like, it, it a, it makes me feel kind of loopy.

I don’t like it. B it’s very difficult for me to sleep on it. Um, which, which is a problem and, you know, but, but the big thing is it just kind of makes me like, feel like I’m not kind of in my own head. Like I feel like, don’t know, like, um, altered on it. I, I would say. And so I went off they gabapentin and no one told me, and I am gonna put this as a PSA out there.

'cause I know a lot of people take it. Do not go off of that cold Turkey.

Jeff: mm.

Christina: They didn’t tell me that. Um, which someone should have, but no one told me that. And it can actually cause seizures if you do other things. But in my case, the real thing was that I had withdrawal. That was some of the worst withdrawal I’ve ever had.

In my life ever. And, um, it like awful, like awful, awful, awful to the point that to go off the Gabapentin and they had me on like a, a decent dosage. It [00:21:00] took me a month because I had to keep going basically down like one pill like every week to step down. And, but I mean, I was getting, you know, like, like hot and cold sweats, you know, like feeling like my teeth were gnashing, you know, like nauseous, just like awful, awful stuff.

So it took me, you know, a month to go off of that. I had to extend my medical leave in part because of the medication withdrawal stuff, because I was like, I can’t go back to work if I’m gonna be like, still dealing with, with medication bullshit. Um, so, um, that was actually, you know, in some ways like more, uh, of an issue than like recovering from the surgery itself, which was major.

Like I, I tried to kind of downplay like what it was, but it was, it was major surgery and um. Um, I’m glad that it’s over. So, you know, onwards and upwards. I’m, I’ve been back at work for a couple weeks. Um, still kind of settling in on that, but, uh, but yeah.

Brett: That [00:22:00] withdrawal sounds terrible. Usually you have to do opiates to get that kind of fun.

Christina: Yeah, well that was the thing. I saw somebody on, I read it, which of course is anecdotal. I don’t usually look for this stuff, but sometimes you just wanna feel like, okay, is it, is it common for me to have this withdrawal or not? And somebody, and one of the subreddits was like, this was worse than coming off of heroin and I in a jail cell, and I should know because I’ve done that.

And I was like, okay, I, I’m not going to equate it at that level, you know, for, for me. But it was definitely like that bad. It was, let me put it this way, it was bad enough that at first I thought. It was the opiate withdrawal because I, they gave me some, some oxy, um, um, contin. Um, and then the doctor was like, no, that’s not a high enough dosage.

This is, you know, um, it, it, it probably was gabapentin and, and it, it. What pissed me off is that one of the physician’s assistants or whatever, when I’m telling like my doctor about this, I’m like, okay, if I need another nerve drug, then we need to find something [00:23:00] else. I can go on select so I can go on, you know, something else.

But, but I, I clearly can’t stay on this. A, they kind of gaslit me because I’m a woman and obviously my pain and my symptoms can’t be real. So that’s like number one. And that’s just a fact. I don’t care if you’re a male or female doctor, they don’t take you seriously. I’ve complained about that before. Um, b like she had the nerves to say, she was like, well, you know, if the withdrawal is that bad, then why don’t you just stay on the medic medication?

It’s not that it, it, it, it’s fine. I’m like, no, it’s not fine. It makes me feel altered. You’re telling me that it’s for nerve pain, that my nerve pain should be fixed if my nerve pain isn’t fixed and if I need something for nerve stuff, then that’s one thing and we could maybe look at an alternative, something that doesn’t make me feel loopy and lets me sleep.

But if your suggestion is, oh, to avoid the bad withdrawal, just stay on the drug. I’m sorry, what the fuck are we doing? Um, and, and then the doctor’s like, well, you know, we get this all the time. We never see side effects. And then I looked it up, you know, in the actual drug literature and no, there are side effects exactly like the ones I experienced.

So I was like, I recognize that. [00:24:00] I always am usually that like one percentile person who gets like the weird side effect. Like, that’s who I am. I get that. But

Brett: crazy. I’ve, I’ve gone off of gabapentin. It sucks. I You’re not crazy at all.

Christina: yeah. But, but it just, it just was frustrating to me that like the, the suggestions like, we’ll just stay on it. It’s like, no, like that’s, that’s, that’s not actually gonna be a thing anyway, but onward and upward.

Jeff: Yeah. Wow. I’m glad you’re through that. Like

Christina: Yeah, me too. Me too. Okay.

Sponsor One Skin

Christina: Well, I know we have some other topics we wanna get to, but before we do that, um, let’s take a moment to talk about our sponsor of today’s episode One Skin. So, um, you know, I, I’ve gone through a number of different things with my skincare routine over the years. Some have been more effective than other.

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Brett: Awesome.

Terminal Widget Reveal

Brett: Do you guys, can I tell you about terminal widget?

Jeff: Terminal widget. Yes. Set it up. Terminal widget. Brett Terpstra. What’s

Brett: so I, I, I wanted, I had scripts running in the background and I wanted a quick way to check them and I thought it should be easy to put. Script output into a, like a widget on the desktop. And I could not find anything that actually worked. Like Shellfish has a widget, but it, it takes minutes to update and it’s flaky and, and the other apps out there [00:27:00] did not work for me.

So I thought I would build my own. So I think I started it a month ago. Um, I built a, just something for, you can run a terminal command and update a progress bar or an image or, uh, like sparkline text or just straight up text output from your. Terminal, all kinds of charts and everything, and, and it updates instantly on your desktop, uh, with like a 0.5 to one second delay, uh, which I wasn’t able to find anywhere else.

I had to like, use JSON payloads and like basically a cloud kit watcher, um, cloud kit because I did also port it to iOS. And, um, so I can run one command in my terminal or from a script in the background and have my iPhone and my desktop update with progress. Um, I am working [00:28:00] on a watch version of it that is not, I, I have it working in the app, but I wanna make it so it works as a complication.

Um, that’s gonna take a little more doing, uh, but this morning and yesterday I spent working on. The Apple script and shortcuts interfaces for it. And I hate designing Apple Script dictionaries, uh, because there’s no, like, there’s no standard for like terminology and there’s no like golden way to do it.

And I always end up messing it up even when I do have a plan. This time I think I actually succeeded in building out a dictionary that makes semantic sense and is somewhat. Predictable if you’ve ever written Apples script before, but I also added all of the widgets can be controlled from shortcuts. You just drag in like a chart widget into your shortcut and pass in like a value or like a, a chart of values.

It can [00:29:00] do matrices and sign waves and, and line grass and bar charts, and it’s pretty nuts. You can check it out. It’s not available yet, but all of the documentation and all of the screenshots are at Terminal widget app. Um, and I am, I’m pretty impressed with myself and

Christina: yeah.

Brett: that’s what I’ve been working on while waiting for Mark III to make it through app store reviews so I can finally publish that.

I, my latest rejection first, I got rejected, like a couple legitimate. Uh, concerns, but then I had a CLI that I wrote that was embedded in the app bundle and there was an option to create a sim link in your, in your terminal to use the CLI. And this was just a convenience method for like, you give it command line flags and it converts it into URL handlers and they rejected me for

Christina: [00:30:00] I was gonna say, I was gonna say, they don’t let you do that. Like what I’ve seen with other apps do is usually there’s like a, um, in the app store is that usually you have to download a helper to install the CL.

Brett: right. So what I did, uh, to get past the rejection was completely rip out the binary from the bundle. Uh, if you go to the install cli CLI tool menu item, it simply takes you to a webpage where there’s a, a notarized signed PKG file, or you can install from Homebrew, but it’s completely separate from the app store.

And the last rejection said that I was requiring users to download an external app in order to use the app. Which is ridiculous on its face. Like it’s, it’s a convenience method. In no way do you need to download it. Um, there’s no requirement. In fact, it’s almost buried that you would even want it. Um, [00:31:00] and so I argued with the reviewer for a couple days 'cause they were replying like once a day.

Um, and then they told me I had to go through a re uh, the appeal process. So I submitted an appeal at four 50 this morning. We’ll see how long that takes now. But in the meantime, terminal Widget is keeping me sane. I’m having a lot of fun with that.

Widgets And Visualizations

Jeff: I have some terminal widget questions. I’m looking at the site right now. Um, so talk to me about, um, talk to us about your, your initial use case, like was, which you’ve kind of described already, which is you just wanted to be able to check on these scripts

Brett: Yeah. I just wanted a progress

Jeff: But then Brett Terpstra kicks in 'cause like I just wanted a progress bar and now I’m looking at all the flags and everything else that you could have.

You know, I’m curious like of all of the options that are in there, I want you to just share something that might not be intuitive or might not guess you can do. And then I’m curious of like if you have something you’re like, and what I [00:32:00] really want it to be able to do is.

Brett: So you can pass it up to a hundred numbers, like a, a list of space or canvas, separated numbers that you can output from whatever script you’re developing. And you can have it, uh, output a sine wave or a um, uh, a waveform. I like the waveform visualization for it. And so you can get like pretty cool visualizations out of.

Tabular data basically. And I also just added, um, tabular, like you can, you can give it a CSV file and it’ll generate a table for you. And it really only works well on like the large widget size. Um, but on both, on both iOS and Mac, uh, the tables look pretty good.

Jeff: Nice.

Christina: That’s awesome. I, I have a, I have a nerdy, uh, well, but less nerdy question. [00:33:00] Um, on the Terminal WIT app website, um, you have like a, a video of a, like, you know, showing off like, um, you know, your, your, your terminal app open and, um, the, the text being typed out. What did you use to create that?

Did you use a remotion or did you use something else to generate that

Brett: I scripted that, um, I, I wrote if there’s a helper

Christina: charm or something?

Brett: No,

Christina: Okay.

Brett: I, it’s a helper. It’s a helper script that it, it clears the screen and then it takes a table of commands and it types the command out with like a jitter delay. So it looks somewhat natural, like typing. And then it actually runs the command in the background.

And then once the command’s finished, it clears the screen and does the same thing with the next one. Um, so I can just feed it like a, a, uh, a file with all the commands. I wanna run one per line. Um, and it just types them out and executes them.

Jeff: That’s awesome.

Christina: Cool.

Brett: I know, [00:34:00] like I looked into like using like as, as as cinema. Um, and it just to get that kind of really.

Smooth, rapid typing out of it, uh, without, you know, all the backspace and everything. I, it was, I found it difficult to program it to, to code it. And by the time I had it figured out, I figured I should just write my own script for it.

Christina: Yeah. There’s, um, there, there’s a, a. Service called Remotion, which can do some of that sort of graphical work, which is what I thought you might’ve used at first. Um, charm has a thing called VHS, which is basically like a CLI home home recorder, which is pretty cool. Um, and I’ve used that before, but yeah, I was just kind of curious, um, what you did, but yeah, you just built your own.

That’s awesome. Very cool.

Release Plans And Review

Christina: Um, now for your, your, when do you think like, because I, I noticed that you have like for for blog book and for terminal widget, you have like coming soon. Is that like, 'cause [00:35:00] you’re still kind of like working on stuff or, um, are you going through review hell with those as well?

Brett: I haven’t even tried getting either of those reviewed. Um, blog book I is approved for test flight, um, and anyone who wants in on that can just contact me. It is getting the slowest development out of all my projects right now just because it is, it’s a more niche app that I don’t think is gonna make a ton of money.

But, um, mark III is where most of my effort is going. Then I’m working on porting mark three’s, uh, store kit stuff into NV Ultra, and then I can focus on trying to usher terminal widget through app review. Um, I have a feeling that’s going to go very poorly and I may end up just releasing outside the app store, but because it has an iOS

Christina: I was gonna say with the iOS component is the hard part.

Brett: I kind of have to, so we’ll see what happens.

Christina: Yeah. [00:36:00] 'cause I was gonna say, 'cause like, I mean I guess what you could do is if you did something for the iOS F would make it different though. Like if it’s just, 'cause I’m sure it has, it’s working out. It’s pretty much just remote instance that’s showing

Brett: No, no, it’s got, it’s a,

Christina: you, you built in your own terminal emulator into it.

Brett: no, there’s no, no, no, no, no, no. There’s no terminal in this app at all. Like, you use it from whatever terminal or from shortcuts. Um, so it’s all native widgets on both.

Christina: right. I was just saying in terms of the app store thing, like, I guess like if since there’s not a native terminal on, on iOS, it’s, I’m assuming that it’s, it’s a remote widget is what I was trying to get at.

Brett: Essentially, yes. But if you write a shortcut on iOS that updates the widget, it updates both iOS and Mac os. So it is usable entirely. You could just buy it for iOS and, and it would be a functional app.

Christina: okay. Okay.

Universal Bundle Pricing

Brett: But I do intend, I hope [00:37:00] to sell it as one universal bundle. So you pay like 9 99 and you get the iOS, the Mac, and the watch app without having to buy for every platform separately.

Um, I just don’t see it being like such a valuable app that it’s worth making people go through that rigamarole.

Christina: right. No, I was just trying to think.

Brett: and everyone I’ve shown it to so far has been excited about it and the most common response I get is I will buy this as soon as I figure out what I would use it for. I’m like, yeah, okay.

Jeff: Okay, fine. Awesome.

AI Boosts Mark II Sales

Jeff: And can you talk about how, because the whole world now works in markdown marked, has gotten a bump because I think that’s an amazing story.

Brett: Well, yeah, it was. was a few months ago now, maybe six months. Um, my sales just started increasing and I was looking everywhere through all my traffic and all my logs [00:38:00] to figure out where this, where these people were coming from. Um, and it was eventually pointed out to me that if you ask any agent, any AI agent what you should use to view markdown, um, they would point you to Mark two.

And it was now, for the last four months, five months, it’s been doing five times the sales year over year. What it was doing,

Jeff: How close is it to the highest it ever was?

Brett: um, the highest it ever was was actually when it was only 2 99. And Gruber wrote about it. Uh, back in this is like 2000. This was over a decade ago. And, um, back when, like one tweet from Gruber meant like success and that I made that year, I made almost a hundred thousand dollars on it.[00:39:00]

Um, this is nowhere near that. This is doing like

Jeff: But it’s a highly unexpected bump, right? Like in a delightful, delightful bump.

Brett: yeah. It’s doing, it’s doing without even releasing Mark iii, I’m making about half of my former salary off of it.

Jeff: Nice. I’m happy for you.

Leaving Oracle Behind

Brett: Also, uh, one year, um, in two days I’ll be one year out of Oracle and I quite happy about it.

Jeff: that’s great. I was wondering about that,

Brett: I don’t miss my corporate job. I miss, I miss some aspects, health insurance, paychecks, things like that. But

Jeff: that aren’t at all about the content of the job, right?

Brett: Well, like that stuff has never mattered all that much to me if I’m happy doing the work. And I really wasn’t happy doing the work.

Christina: Well, that’s, that’s the thing. I’m glad that you’re, I’m glad things have been going well. I’m glad that, that the, the agents have, uh, been telling everybody about Mark two. Hopefully they will also tell them [00:40:00] about Mark three. Um.

Ninety Hour Workweeks

Brett: My, my dentist was doing was doing small talk with me, and he knows I’m a app developer and he asked me, so how many hours a week do you work? And I happen to know the answer because I had just read my timing app report for last week and I said, 90. And he said, oh wow. How much do you make? And he’s like, if you don’t mind me asking.

So I told him and uh, it saying it out loud, it’s basically like 20 bucks an hour I get paid. And like, it’s not nothing, but once these apps are out and I can sit back and just make some passive income off of it, I will, I’ll be much

Jeff: So it’s 90 because you’re, you’re developing multiple things right now and, and you love it.

Brett: I’m pretty much, I’m pretty much on my machine all day except for like an hour for [00:41:00] like getting out, exercising, getting on my recumbent bicycle and an hour for eating. Um,

Jeff: Is it time for you to get a trike? I’m serious.

Brett: I don’t, I don’t know, I, I actually want to try just getting back on a regular bicycle.

Jeff: Hmm.

Brett: Um, but I, yeah, like a recumbent tricycle, that’d be pretty awesome.

Jeff: dad uses him. He actually just converted one to an to an E-bike. Plus it’s hot now 'cause of DTF St. Louis.

Christina: right.

Jeff: Awesome. Uh, is that it for your app development because wow, that’s like, uh, quite a, quite a deal. You got anything else in the cooker?

Brett: Well, like we talked about blog book. Right?

Jeff: Yep.

Brett: Okay. Yeah, that’s, that’s what I got.

Jeff: Nice.

Brett: that’s my big ones.

NV Ultra Vaporware Woes

Brett: NV Ultra is, um, literally only waiting on me to [00:42:00] get Mark three out and then NV Ultra will be out. And it is well passed a time when it would’ve been a smash hit. Um, when, when Nv, when NVL first started dying before, uh, before something like obsidian really

Christina: I was gonna say, if sitting is unfortunately

Brett: yeah, they obsidian and five or six other apps have really eaten up market share for, uh, NV Ultra.

But it would be nice just to get it published. I have been talking about a replacement for NV for over a decade, and

Jeff: Am I gonna get sued if I say this is not your fault.

Brett: It’s, it’s not my fault, like none of them have been my fault. Like they’ve all fallen through on me. Um, but I think people don’t believe me anymore when I say it’s coming. In fact, it, in fact, if you ask an AI agent, they will tell you that MB Ultra is vaporware.[00:43:00]

Christina: Well,

Jeff: a lot ai.

Christina: I mean, look at this point, even though yeah, it’s been in beta and you’ve had other things going on. I mean, like it, you know, again, it wasn’t your fault, but, but, but you know, we’ve all been in those situations where you’re like, it’s coming, it’s coming. Or this thing is like, at a certain point you’re like, okay.

Like

Brett: Yeah.

Missing Collaborators Online

Brett: Well that there was Bit Writer

Christina: TechMate too.

Brett: Bit Writer was one that preceded NV Ultra and I was working on that with David Halter, who was a co contributor on VT and. He disappeared. I don’t know if he died or what, but about years ago he just stopped replying to emails, disappeared off of Slack, disappeared from the internet.

Just I, and I don’t ha I don’t know his next of kin. I don’t have anyone I can like ask, Hey, whatever happened to David. So if you’re out there, if you’re listening, I’d love to hear from you just to know you’re alive. Just to, just to [00:44:00] check in. Um, I’ve actually had a few people disappear over the last couple months that ha it’s been disconcert when, when you’re used to hearing from someone at least, you know, once a week even.

But some of these people were like every day, um, I.

Jeff: from them, meaning seeing them somewhere or corresponding or.

Brett: Uh, online. These are, these are people I only know online. So like seeing them on Macedon or Facebook or getting emails or text messages from them. Um, a couple of them were in their eighties or nineties, and so it’s not,

Jeff: That might be your problem.

Brett: it, it’s not out of the realm of the possibility that they have passed on. Um, but some of them were younger than me and one of them has come back after two weeks of messaging, like every other day, like, Hey, are you okay?

Haven’t heard from you. Um, finally they’re like, oh, yeah, I’m here. [00:45:00] And offered no explanation for where they’d been or why they went silent, but I didn’t pry either. So.

Dan Peterson Secret App

Jeff: What is your project with Dan Peterson? That’s on our, our list.

Brett: I don’t know if I’m allowed to say a lot about it, but I’ve been working. Dan Peterson is one, the original designer of one password and worked with them for like 20 years before he struck out on his own. And we’ve teamed up, we’re working on a couple things, but one is a a, an IO iOS app that he has put in. I, I don’t even know how many hours into the design of it, like 3D modeling, spline rendering, and um, and then we ported it into an iOS interface. And it is gorgeous. It, it will it when, when it gets to market, which we’re hoping to have it in [00:46:00] testate in time for Max stock in July. Um, it’ll be the best looking app I’ve ever been a part of.

It’s gonna be so cool.

Jeff: Nice.

Christina: That’s awesome.

Jeff: Busy time.

Brett: Yeah.

Jeff: It’s

Christina: That’s awesome.

Jeff: What else do we got? I mean, Brett, you showed up with a big list.

The Pit TV Complaints

Christina: I was gonna, is anybody watching anything? Uh, good on TV or rewatching anything?

Jeff: I have a serious complaint to put into the world, so I’ve avoided the pit for a long time. Uh, just 'cause I’m, I don’t, I’m not a huge like yeah,

Brett: drama.

Jeff: it is great. Except are there two separate writing teams for the stars and staff and the people that come in as patients? Because the writing for the people that come in patients is.

Awful. They acting sometimes too. Sometimes there’s some people that sell it. I’m only through season one, uh, but I was like, I have been yelling at the tv, uh, about this [00:47:00] for some time. Um, besides also yelling at the TV for the point at which, um, our young friend with a w as a last name Whitaker, who, uh, gets blood all over his face and then they don’t actually immediately clean it up.

Um, uh, so I yell at the screen and I like the show, but I yell. I haven’t had a TV show that I’m like, oh, for fuck’s sake now. I mean, I can handle that in The Walking Dead. I can handle that in that kind of movie. But in the ER thing I’m like, come on, you can’t get a writer to handle the patients. I don’t understand.

You’ve got an incredible cast, like an incredible cast.

Brett: It’s actually all ad-libbed.

Jeff: all ad-libs, like the clown. There’s a clown, I won’t give it up, but there’s a, there’s a clown that has been through a mass event and he’s in the, uh, he’s in the ER with his clown makeup on still, and some blood going down his face and at some point he looks around and he goes, what a circus. I just think they, I think, I don’t understand. This confuses me very much [00:48:00] in TV shows when you’re like, okay, you’ve got a great writing team, but clearly you have a separate writing team that is doing just this little job that is actually quite important. So that’s my complaint about the pit. Otherwise, I like it quite a bit.

I’m very excited to start season two, probably

this weekend.

Christina: it’s a good season. It’s a good season. So, yeah, 'cause, because, because I, I, I, um, it, it ended last week and I’m, I’m a big fan of the pit. I will say this, the pit fandom is insane and not in a good way. Like these are people who don’t understand how to watch television shows and don’t understand.

Like how television shows work, and, and then also become very entitled about like, how, like their vision of the characters and things should be on a level. Like the last time I’ve seen it, it it’s the same, it’s similar with heated rivalry, but it’s somehow worse because this isn’t like a genre show like that.

It’s like low quality for like, you know, middle aged like white women, um, in the suburbs. Um, who, who just like to see two, two hockey players. [00:49:00] You know? Fuck. Um, like, like the pit is actually like, I’m not gonna call it Prestige TV because it’s not er level, but it’s a very good show and it’s extremely well acted.

And I think the writing, um, I, I think make a good point about the, uh, the patients not getting as good of storylines as the doctors. But, um,

Jeff: no. I don’t need storylines. I

Christina: no, I I mean the

Jeff: words they

Christina: Yeah. Yeah. No, that, that’s, that, that, that that’s what I mean, like, like that, that, that, that I, I, I hear, I hear your

Jeff: Because where there’s a patient storyline, those are almost exclusively great.

Christina: Yeah, it, so you’re more talking about like, like, like the kind of the background characters, like, kind of like the, the, the one-offs. Yeah, I think, I think that’s fair. Well, a lot of the writing staff and like executive producers are doctors or people who have like, you know, worked, um, extensively in healthcare.

And so I, I, I wonder if like, that’s kind of part of it, um, where

Brett: they’re really good at writing the doctor’s parts. They’re not

so good at

Jeff: so good. Oh my God, so

Christina: so good at doing the doctor’s parts and, and the procedures. Like they wanna be medically [00:50:00] accurate and like they really, they really are committed to that. There are, um, there are a couple of, I’m trying to think, um, the, the Whitaker thing, I think that was just, I enjoyed that myself.

Like the fact that he’s always getting blood

Jeff: Oh, I loved the bit, I just couldn’t believe that. I couldn’t believe that through quite, you know, a couple of different bits after that. The blood’s still on his face. I’m like, there has to be a protocol to get blood off your face.

Christina: No, there definitely has to be, but I mean, part also one of the running gags first season two. And, and sorry for spoilers, for anyone who hasn’t watched the pit

Jeff: Wait, I’m gonna close my ears. Okay. Go ahead. Wave when you’re done.

Christina: Rob Robbie can’t pee. And, uh, this wasn’t a real spoiler, but like, but one of the things is like, you know, Robbie’s never able to like, go to the bathroom.

Like he can never find a way to pee. So

Jeff: I’m back.

Brett: you’re safe now.

Jeff: I’m back.

Christina: you, you’re safe. And I didn’t spoil anything. I was

ER Nostalgia and Cast

Jeff: The other thing I’ll say about the pit that surprised I did not watch ER and not 'cause out of bad attitude. Uh, it was just a point in my life when I wasn’t watching a lot of tv. Um, I also didn’t realize until I was [00:51:00] like five episodes in that Noah Wiley was a big character in er. I think that’s really cool.

Um,

Christina: Okay. Okay. I, I understand you weren’t watching TV then, but how did you not realize that Noah Wiley was

Jeff: I didn’t know Noah Wiley’s name. Like I, this is just not, I don’t hold names of people. I, you know, I also, on the albums, I love that. I don’t remember song, I don’t know song titles half the time. Um, so I don’t mind You can, you can be very disappointed and express it. And I will accept it. I will receive it.

Christina: No, I’m just shocked

Jeff: to be better.

Christina: because I, I mean, 'cause because I was like 10 years old when ER came out and like, I don’t know, like they were like, that was the number one show on television

Jeff: Totally. And I mean, Clooney, come on. I know

Clooney.

Christina: course Clooney, but, but like, but it was Clooney.

It was, but but like the, the, the, the, the original, it was Clooney, it was uh, uh, Sherry Stringfeld, it was um, um, uh, Eric Lesal. It was Juliana Margolis, it was Noah Wiley, and it was Anthony Edwards. So like,

Jeff: Oh, my favorite Timber

Christina: and I was gonna say ironically going into when er came out, like the, the name was Anthony [00:52:00] Edwards, like, he was like number one on the call sheet, right?

Like Clooney I think was like four. Um, and, and then, and then Clooney because he’s a good guy, like blew the fuck up and then still did them a solid and did like a full freaking five years on that show,

Jeff: Yeah,

which is awesome.

Christina: he did not, David, David Caruso, it like David Caruso, who famously like had one, you know, big season of NYPD Blue fucks off to go do a movie career.

The movie career implodes, there’s a clause in his contract because A, b, C was so furious about how the way he quit NYPD Blue, that they were like, okay, well you can’t do any television for x number of years. And then his movie career dies and then he has to like come like hat in hand to like CSI Miami.

Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. Well I love the pit and this thing that surprised me is the thing I always stayed away from is like I can handle gore in almost every context except real life. And so like I can do all the gore of the Walking Dead. I can do all the gore of Game of Thrones or something, but like, I was like, I don’t know if I want, [00:53:00] yeah.

Gore. I love it. I mean, I love it. 'cause I’m fascinated. I’m just fascinated. I’m like, oh, that’s what it looks like when you do that. Like, right. Like you just snip the fingertip off. That’s what it looks like when you do that. Like,

Christina: no,

Jeff: the first

Christina: they show some of the stuff,

Jeff: yeah, the first half. I did this every time I covered my face whenever it was like that.

And then all of a sudden I could handle it. And I was like, this is fascinating. This is totally

Christina: What episode are you, are you up to? How many do you

Jeff: I actually, I only have 15 left. I have the last episode left. Um, and unfortunately, like we’ve had, like my brother’s, not unfortunately, my brother’s been, we had stuff every night until late for like three or four days.

And I’m so ready to watch that thing. And now, now my wife’s going outta town, so I’m not sure we’ll even see it for another week. It’s making me crazy.

Brett: are you watching it together? And you have to wait for her.

Jeff: Yeah. Well, and we, and, and sometimes it’s easy for us to find a show together and sometimes there’s just a long dry spell. And so it’s also just like nice. It’s just nice to have a show together always. Um, and so it’s the combination of like, that’s just nice to do and I’m right at the end and I’m just ready

to

Christina: And you just wanna do that together? [00:54:00] Yeah, no, it makes sense.

Season Two and Other Shows

Christina: Um, I, I’m, I’m curious to see what you’ll think of season two. Um, I, I, um, it’s, it’s different in some ways. It doesn’t have like the, the, I’m not spoiling anything, but like, it doesn’t have like a big like, catalyzing event, like, like season one does.

Um, but I still think it’s, it’s really good TV and, uh, yeah, definitely one of my favorite shows, um, hacks is Back for its final season. That’s definitely one of my favorite

Brett: That

Jeff: I never

Brett: good. I, I finished season one. Um, I think there’s three seasons or is there more?

Christina: This, it is now in its fifth season. Yeah.

Brett: Okay. Yeah. I, I finished season one and then kind of forgot about it, and then I just saw some trailers for the new season and thought, oh, I should get back into this. It looks, it looks like it, it, it looks like it did well, um,

Christina: No, I mean, shrinking. Yeah.

Brett: I was gonna say, the new season of shrinking is really good too.

Christina: Yeah, it is. Yeah. Um, well, well, uh, bill Lawrence is, is, uh, who created that and he created Scrubs and Spin City and [00:55:00] some other things. Like he’s, he’s really, really, um, good. He also did Rooster, which is now on HBO Max. Um, but, oh, the Scrubs Revival. Speaking of, of new shows, I don’t know if it’s gonna get like renewed because it hasn’t been renewed yet.

And so I’m a little bit concerned that it hasn’t been renewed yet, and I only did nine episodes for the first season. But the, the Scrubs reboot, revival, whatever you wanna call it, and I say this is somebody who was a huge scrub fan. I, I don’t consider the, the final season to be scrubs like that. It is not part of Canon to me.

Like, I feel like that, that, that wasn’t it, but I thought they actually did an amazing job, um, with the, with the reboot. Like I actually. And, and it was hard for them too because John c McGinley is on Rooster and, um, uh, Judy Reyes is on, um, uh, high Potential. And, um, so, you know, the only like, you know, main characters from the original that they have back in every single episode [00:56:00] are, um, uh, Elliot, JD and Turk.

Um, but, uh, and then, and then you see, you know, kind of like, like Carla just isn’t in the office sometimes, but she has some guest appearances. Um, but they actually managed to, to do this, they managed to do like a next generation type of story, but still focused on like the main characters you love, but still kind of bring in like new younger doctors in like a way that I’m genuinely really impressed with how they did it.

And, and like it kept the heart and kind of the, the feel of the original, like I, it, it was, I was very, very impressed that they were able to recapture. What made that show so good, um, for, its, I guess they’re calling it its 10th season, but, um, I, I really hope that it comes back because that’s a really good show.

Brett: Speaking of reboots, um, they’re rebooting, um, Malcolm in the middle,

Jeff: I

Christina: Yes, they did. [00:57:00] Yeah. They did a four episode thing.

Brett: but what I saw an, I saw Hot ones versus with, um, uh, Frankie Muni and whatever. How

Christina: Yeah. Brian Cranston. Who, Brian Cranston. Who, who was, who was the, the father of, of, of Mel King on the pit.

Brett: Oh, there you go.

Jeff: is so cool. I love her so much.

Brett: but anyway, they’re talking about why Dewey wouldn’t come back and basically he was like, I haven’t acted since I was nine. He’s like, he is busy. He is got a life

Christina: He’s in grad school, like he went to Harvard and stuff like, like, he’s like, uh, I, which I, I love. And I’m like, okay. You know, I mean, I would’ve loved to see Joey too, but I don’t blame him for being like, no.

Brett: Yeah.

Jeff: Yeah. Yeah.

Brett: neither, neither did the other actors, I don’t think. I think, uh, it, it wasn’t necessary to

Christina: no, I was gonna say he wasn’t because

Brett: the Yeah,

Christina: mean, look, they were able to do Fuller House without the Olson [00:58:00] twins who were a much bigger part of that show

Jeff: Fuller

Christina: ever was. And, and I, I, I’m not even like defending Fuller house. Like it was, it was fine. It was whatever. But like, even that, you were like, there were enough characters where you’re like, okay, so, so Michelle isn’t here.

And that would’ve been weird, to be honest. I don’t think that, like I know that everybody would’ve loved having the cameo, but it’s like, how in the hell are you gonna have the Olson twins, like as adults, even in a cameo on Fuller House without just completely taking you out of the whole thing. You know what I mean?

Brett: Yeah.

Christina: Like, it just, it just wouldn’t be possible. But

Gratitude App Picks

Brett: we try to fit in a gude before

Jeff: Should we grab,

Christina: yeah. Let’s do a gratitude.

Brett: Um, I can kick it off. I got one I’m excited about. Um, found this app called Bezel. Um, I needed to do iOS screenshots and I needed to do iOS recordings, and I played around with using Screen flow and screen Studio and Camtasia, and I didn’t like [00:59:00] any of the ways that they recorded iOS movies.

And then I found Bezel and I mean, c So screen recording built into iOS, in my opinion, is better than any of the like screen casting apps can do. Um, but bezel, if you, if you hard co hardwire your phone to your computer and turn on screen, mirroring it can record. Perfect. Um. iOS recordings, and it’s really good at just taking screenshots with a single key key command.

You get a screenshot with a bezel like the outline of the phone and a desktop background behind it. So I can just hit command S as I like, move through my phone, uh, and then my right hand on my phone, my left hand on my keyboard, and I can get a dozen iOS screenshots in five minutes, and they’re ready to go, like ready to [01:00:00] publish.

It’s really nice.

Jeff: That’s really awesome. I’m gonna try that.

Christina: Same, same. Do you have one Brett, or do you want me to, or uh, Jeff do or do you want me to go.

AI Tools and Claude Code

Jeff: Uh, I’m happy to go. Um, so this is, this is, uh, an easy one in a way, but I, I wanna be specific about what’s been so useful. So I’ve been using cloud code and vs code forever. I mean for the last, I’d say two or three months. 'cause I’ve got really, really deep into using cloud code actually for qualitative work.

Um, but also a totally bananas project I built that has both a. Physical component and a heavy duty code component, which I’ll talk about sometime. Um, but, um, I, and I’ve used the desktop app for cowork and for like just the standard chat and I’ve loved that, but I never used it for cloud code until this latest update, which added like a really amazing interface for cloud code.

Um, which is kind of my gratitude is that tab of the desktop app, which like, when you open it up, it gives you like just an awesome little like, work summary of like comedy sessions [01:01:00] you’ve had, how many total tokens you’ve used, like overall the last 30 days, the last seven days, what your peak hour is your longest streak.

It has the like GitHub, like little chart that fills in. Um, and, uh, and, and that’s like been really cool to see. Um, and you can also see your usage of various models. It’s just a nice little thing that pops up. And then when you’re actually working, it’s really amazing because you can pull up these sidebars that have like diffs or like a preview or you can just get a terminal open in there.

Um, and I have. I have loved that. I still like feel more at home in the VS. Code. Version, um, and using it there. But I’ve really loved it. And I’ve also just like, I’ve gone really, really deep into cloud code and like agent teams and all this stuff on, on work that I was already doing a lot. But then also just being able to like manifest things that I’ve had in my brain for a long time that are now just like everyday tools.

Um, so that’s been really, really exciting. I think like my little, [01:02:00] my journey with AI has been well documented on Overtired, but like, this is the first time that I’ve been in a situation where I’m, I’m doing more than like, ideating and I’m like landing things all the time, which is I’m noticing from like my colleagues, not always easy 'cause you can just get lost in the cycle of ideating.

And, and I am someone who traditionally does not land things easily unless there’s like, now is the time that if I don’t land this, it has professional consequences. Like, and then I land something and I, I’m very proud of it, whatever. But I have just been like, I want. To execute this vision. And sometimes it’s 40 hours of working with Claude Code to make the thing work.

Like my crazy project I’m not talking about right now, just 'cause it would take too long. Um, but o other times I’m done in an hour or whatever and it’s really changed my life and also like makes my fear of AI super specific. Um, and, and that is its own. Its own piece of doing this. Like, 'cause the AI conversation is often so kind of unsatisfying.

'cause it [01:03:00] doesn’t come with any experience of ai, but you don’t need experience to have good reason to be afraid of it. But like, using it and being excited about it and then feeling weird about being excited about it and then being like, fuck it, this is amazing. Um, but also the deeper I get into it’s like really like nuanced functionality.

It’s like, oh yeah, we’re done. Just, it’s, everything’s done. Everything’s different. Everything’s, it’s, yeah. Like, fuck. But, um, but anyway, I’ve been, it’s been helping me to bring some things to life that, um, I’ve, I’ve always, I mean, years I’ve been thinking about them, so that’s been great.

Christina: N Yeah, no, I, I, I share your concerns about ai. I think very, very similarly, and I, I obviously work on this stuff, and so I have very like, complicated feelings about like, getting excited by it being, finding a lot of use cases and also being like, yeah, we, this is changing things in a way that there are consequences for that.

You know, I don’t know if, if society is prepared for, like, it’s certainly great for the, you know, um, huge Frontier Labs and, [01:04:00] and, and major companies that are raising billions and billions of dollars. But what about like, the rest of us? Um, and, and it, you know, what does it do to various things, but yeah, no, the, the clo the CLO app is, is good.

And, um, um, uh, a good call out on their, um, on their code tab.

Jeff: Yeah. They just developed that thing so quickly, uh, with Claude code, I

Christina: of course.

Jeff: it, like it’s developing so quickly and it’s, and it is always like serious value add,

Christina: Yeah, which is kind of part of their moat, right? Like they’re trying to, they want as many people to, you know, pay them a hundred or $200 a month as possible. Um, okay.

Bookshelves and Audiobooks

Christina: Uh, so my, uh, my, my pick is bookshelves, which is, um, uh, app that I, I might’ve found it on, on, on Reddit. And I don’t even like the Mac app subreddit 'cause it’s full of a lot of ai lop and look, this is probably largely generated by ai.

I don’t really care. It’s, it’s a good app. So Collibra, which we’ve talked about before, you know, is an e reading app. I do too. But like, it, it, it, it doesn’t have best [01:05:00] interface, you know, and it, it’s kind of unwieldy. Um, so bookshelves, um, there’s a free version for 10 books, um, but there’s a, um, it’s only 4 99.

It’s a onetime purchase. It’s available in the app store. It’s available on iOS and on, um, Mac os. It will work as a, you know, um, uh, uh, OPDS, um, uh, server, or what else? So you can, you know, like use it with a calibra type of front end thing if you wanna access your library. That way it doesn’t support Alires Library, but I think you can import books from that way.

Um, you can, um, email books directly from your library to your Kindle or your Cobo or, or pocketbook. Um, it, it, you know, supports EPUB and PDF and Moby and, you know, all the Amazon formats and, and the comic book stuff for native reading. I really like it. It’s, it’s, um. One of those apps that, like I’m, 'cause sometimes I’m just like, the, the Books app on, uh, is convenient because it will keep everything synced, but it sucks for [01:06:00] anything else.

And oftentimes you have things that are in formats that might not be that, or you wanna store lots of books or search through various things. So if you’re looking for a, a modern e, um, book reader app, or even just like a, a decent epub app on iOS, um, because there are not a lot of them, um, I, I would, uh, I would highly recommend, uh, bookshelves.

Brett: Nice. Um, I, I should also mention there’s an app called Book Reader and it is designed for audio books. And so I’ve been finding. There are, there’s some literature of the anarchist variety that you’ll never find in any of the bookstores. Um, but you can buy it through independent presses. And if you get the audiobook version, they usually send you like a folder of MP three files and I didn’t know what to do with them.

And book reader, uh, works on Mac OS and iOS and you can just drag a folder of MP three files and it’ll generate a book [01:07:00] with chapters for you that you can then listen to in the app. And that’s been handy.

Jeff: That’s cool.

Christina: That’s great.

Jeff: Awesome.

Christina: All

Wrap Up and Sleep

Brett: right, well, hey, get some sleep.

Christina: Yeah. Get some sleep everybody. Great show. Great. Great. Uh, catching up with all of you.

Jeff: Yeah, great to see you all get some sleep.