Latent Cheetos Smell

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[00:00:03] Brett: This episode is brought to you by HIMS. Stay tuned for more info on how they can help you with men’s health. Welcome to Overtired. We are back. Couple weeks off. I’m Brett Terpstra. I’m here with Jeff Severins Gunsel and Christina Warren and special guest Erin Dawson. Welcome to the show, everybody.

[00:00:22] Jeff: WelcomeErinon.

[00:00:25] Erin: Thank you,

[00:00:25] Christina: Erin.

[00:00:26] Erin: Thank you, Christina. Thank you, Brett.

[00:00:29] Jeff: I just want to thank everybody.

[00:00:31] Brett: Erin, introduce yourself.

[00:00:32] Erin: have something to say about hymns first.

[00:00:35] Jeff: Hmm.

[00:00:36] Erin: Um, I think I know what hymns is. And do they also work for, like, lady boners?

[00:00:45] Brett: Well, it depends on the type of lady, I guess.

[00:00:48] Erin: Right, well, ladies that could nominally achieve, like, how’s that work?

[00:00:54] Brett: That’s a, that’s a, it’s a fair question. Uh, we may have to contact their ad department to [00:01:00] find out how they want to spin that.

[00:01:01] Erin: What we may also have to do is start this episode over. I’m so sorry. I probably

[00:01:08] Jeff: Whoa, Brett, no, we don’t have to start over, but Brett, did you just play the intro bit?

[00:01:12] Brett: no. That was, it’s the same voice. Um, my, my website just generated because the current giveaway ended at noon. So it generated the like this, this giveaway is over post and every time it finishes generating, and this happens to me on conference calls all the time, it, it says in Zarbox voice, bam, generated.

[00:01:38] Jeff: Wow, that’s cool. I like it.

[00:01:41] Brett: I love, I love Zarbox. Anyway, Erin, Erin.

[00:01:44] Brett: Aaron,

[00:01:44] Erin: let’s make this about me. Um, hello, my name is Erin Dawson. Full disclosure, I work with one Brett Terpstra. Um, that is what I do for a living, which is to work with Brett. Um, but

[00:01:57] Brett: so than you used to. We’ve kind of moved to different [00:02:00] teams, but yeah.

[00:02:01] Tales from the tour

[00:02:01] Erin: I hate that. Uh, but in my real life, my waking life, my sober ish life, I am a musician, um, and more specifically a black metal musician, uh, with a project called Genital Shame for which I just got back, um, from a tour a couple weeks ago.

[00:02:21] Erin: Uh, started in Chicago, played my hometown Pittsburgh, went to Montreal. Baltimore, Brooklyn, Boston, and ended in Cincinnati. And really, like, it was kind of uneventful. Usually with tours like this, you’re spending six hours on average a day in a van with, you know, boys with, you know, may or may not have Stomach issues.

[00:02:49] Erin: So that,

[00:02:50] Jeff: good smells.

[00:02:51] Erin: that could be a, yeah, uh, an atmosphere creates in the van where you look up and you can start to see cloud formation. [00:03:00] Um, but I’m happy to say like, by the end of it, like I want to spend more time with these people. Uh, my backing band is a band in its own right called Stander from Chicago. But when we we’re on the same label, um, so when we tour, uh, they’re my backing band, but, um, yeah.

[00:03:17] Erin: Highlights include playing Brooklyn. We played St. Vitus, this I don’t know if you’re familiar.

[00:03:23] Jeff: Vitus.

[00:03:24] Erin: Yeah, it’s it’s, uh, I don’t know if you’re familiar, uh, Christina, but it’s it’s sort of a, like, metal institution in in Brooklyn. And, like, two days after Genital Shame played, they were shut down. Uh, hopefully temporarily, they still are for noise ordinance stuff.

[00:03:41] Christina: Damn. Okay. And like, what part of

[00:03:43] Erin: right under the

[00:03:45] Christina: What type of, what part of Brooklyn is

[00:03:46] Erin: green point?

[00:03:47] Christina: Greenpoint? Greenpoint? Okay. So, all right. So it’s been gentrified a lot, but still to get like a noise ordinance complaint, that’s impressive. Uh, honestly, like that’s, that’s,

[00:03:57] Jeff: My, my brother owns two bars in [00:04:00] Greenpoint in Williamsburg next to each other and he has to have the neighbors, he has the neighbors numbers on his cell phone. They call him directly instead of a noise complaint and it happens all the time.

[00:04:10] Erin: At least,

[00:04:10] Jeff: talk them down.

[00:04:12] Erin: like, that’s cool to keep the cops out of it, like, directly

[00:04:15] Christina: Yeah. Yeah. I was

[00:04:16] Jeff: That was his thing is he’s like, Hey, can we talk about this?

[00:04:20] Christina: Yeah, right before I moved, they, um, there’s like this backdoor area from like this restaurant that was right next door to us, like right next door to us. And I didn’t like mind so much. It’s just that it was like the patio area, like during the weekend, fine. But like during the week, I’m not going to lie.

[00:04:38] Christina: Like I kind of felt like I was becoming like an old person because, you know, if, if it’s like two o’clock in the morning. And there’s a backyard full of people just like partying. You’re kind of like, okay, I don’t have any choice here. Like, can, can, can you not? But I still, never in my mildest dreams, like, I could never even conceive of calling, like, the police for noise complaint.[00:05:00]

[00:05:00] Christina: Like, it’s

[00:05:00] Brett: I have, I have called the front desk. Um, one year at Macworld, uh, Mac, Mac stock, um, I was trying to sleep cause I was resenting the next morning and it was so noisy. Someone was just having a, a riot. So I called the front desk. I’m like, Hey, I’m in this room. Could you please, um, ask the people in this room to quiet down?

[00:05:21] Brett: Turns out the next day that it was some of my best friends. Like, at the conference, and I had like, I had called, essentially called the cops on them, which

[00:05:31] Christina: Well, I mean,

[00:05:31] Brett: I admitted to. Sorry.

[00:05:33] Christina: mean, I mean, I mean, the thing is, is like, it’s okay to like, be told to like quiet down when it’s annoying as if somebody asks you if you can quiet down and it’s after like 11 PM and you won’t, then I think it’s like, okay, now you’re a Satan. And now actually like if the cops are called, I’m actually completely fine with that.

[00:05:51] Christina: You know what I mean? Like, um,

[00:05:54] Brett: you’re out.

[00:05:54] Christina: Well, no, I mean, the thing is like, we had an incident, um, uh, where, where I live, I’m like, I pay [00:06:00] way too much in rent for this stuff, but I’m on the seventh floor. The only thing above me is the roof deck. And so we have really high ceilings and there was like a massive party happening.

[00:06:08] Christina: And I think like, it was, I was ignoring it. Until I think like 2. 30 and the thing is, is no one’s supposed to be on the roof deck after I think like 11 and, and then, and like they would not shut up and then they were like rude about it and then they were like taunting about it and I was like, okay, I’m, I’m actually going to like file a complaint with the, you know, building that I paid too much money for.

[00:06:32] Christina: Um, I think Grant called the cops. I would never call the cops still because, you know. Fuck that, but like, um, also everyone there to be, to be, just, just, just to put it out there, everyone at the party and everyone who is like, in the building is extremely white and extremely privileged, so there’s like, no risk of, you know, all you’re doing is wasting the cop’s time, which, I mean, honestly, who cares?

[00:06:53] Brett: Okay, so you played, you played the last show, as far as, as far as anyone knows, [00:07:00] the last show at

[00:07:01] Erin: Yeah, yeah. A band called Genital Shame. Um,

[00:07:07] Christina: it.

[00:07:08] Brett: I, uh, I played a show at a place called Nightingales. I can’t remember what borough it was in. It was Queens or Brooklyn, I think. Um, and they told me the next day that they were closing, um, indefinitely. I don’t know if they ever came back, but as far as I know, at least in the year 2000, I played the last show at Nightingales with the

[00:07:31] Christina: Nightingales in Brooklyn, but I probably had it wrong. It’s probably, I’m sure it’s a completely different place, but there was a Nightingales in Brooklyn. But yeah, so, but I’m sure now that was probably a different spot, but congrats, Brett. You, you

[00:07:41] Brett: I, that can’t, that can’t be an uncommon name.

[00:07:44] Christina: No, it can’t be, but yeah, but

[00:07:46] Brett: probably a Nightingale’s in every city. Any other good stories, Erin?

[00:07:54] Erin: It ended, the tour ended unceremoniously in Cincinnati, where [00:08:00] undergraduate’s, uh, floor. And I had bruises on my legs for that, from that, for a while.

[00:08:08] Jeff: That’s ceremonious. Heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh

[00:08:12] Erin: bruising ceremony of Cincinnati

[00:08:14] Jeff: heh

[00:08:15] Erin: Um,

[00:08:16] Christina: it’s a new song.

[00:08:17] Brett: do you get groupies?

[00:08:24] Erin: I don’t, I don’t kiss and tell. Uh, not really. I, I think like, genital shame is, you know, I’m trans. Like, maybe some of the themes in genital shame, uh, are about, uh, being trans, though not really. Uh, but even Even that little bit of, of information does attract trans listeners, um, and there, the trans community is very incestuous, for sure.

[00:08:52] Erin: Um, but on the, on the road, I keep, I keep an arm’s length, really, in the green room, in the Greenpoint green room. Um, [00:09:00] but, yeah, yeah, not, not really. I, it’s funny, like, My, I am like quite silly in, in real life, but I, my music is not. So it’s, it’s a hard balance for me to strike. And it’s something I think about a lot.

[00:09:15] Erin: Um, like, just like what I say between songs, right? Like the sort of like crowd work you’re doing in, in Brooklyn, actually, uh, before. Our last song, Mike, my guitar player, broke a string and had to change strings on stage right before our last song. It’s just like the, the like, the most nerve wracking gig.

[00:09:38] Erin: Um, but like, so I had to vamp for five minutes and like my eyes rolled back in my head and I just like did bits and uh, like I think I even said like, this is like an anxiety dream in real life. Where like, you’re on stage, the lights are on you, many people are looking at you, and you’re expected to entertain, and you have nothing to [00:10:00] say.

[00:10:00] Erin: There is no script. Uh, but it worked out. Um,

[00:10:04] Jeff: Awesome.

[00:10:05] Brett: I used to, if that happened to us on stage, I used to start playing Crazy Train on bass only. Um, and people would be like, yeah, and then eventually the, the string would get fixed or the, the amp would get replaced. And I would stop because I can only get so far using just a bass on Crazy Train. But when you’re dealing with a bunch

[00:10:26] Erin: when he played an original. Yeah.

[00:10:29] Jeff: Heh heh heh. Oh

[00:10:30] Erin: Yeah, that’s it. That’s it for Tor, really.

[00:10:32] Brett: All right. That we are on, we’re trying to keep our, our total length down. So that’s, I feel like an appropriately sized tour report. Thank you.

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[00:12:21] Mental Health Corner

[00:12:21] Brett: Um, let’s do, uh, let’s do a relatively brief mental health check in.

[00:12:26] Christina: Okay, I’ll start. I’ll start, um, because I figured that Brett probably has things that he wants to go with. Um, unless Erin, unless Erin, unless you would like to start. Um, okay. So I just got back from South by Southwest. I was in Austin for six days, which, that’s a long time. Um, South by was good. I haven’t been in a very long time and I certainly haven’t been since the pandemic.

[00:12:49] Christina: The vibe was kind of weird. I’m not going to lie. Um, It’s big and I know it’s been big for a long time. Um, it was, but, but at [00:13:00] this point, like it, I think it’s like a few things, like they’re, they’re still kind of coming back to the pandemic, figuring out what it is. And then South by like, when you and I used to, did you ever go Brett?

[00:13:09] Christina: I can’t remember if you ever, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like when we used to go like back in the day, like it started out as a music thing, then it expanded to a film thing, then interactive. It was like this tiny little part that quickly became like the biggest part of the whole show. Then all the marketers took over.

[00:13:23] Christina: And then they got like education and health and all these other like little offshoot things, whatever. Um, and, and I stopped going. Um, this time I feel like they don’t know, like it’s too big in, in my opinion to still try to be kind of maybe like through like one like 10 day period because it takes over the whole city and no longer just the downtown area.

[00:13:45] Christina: Like you have to like, you know, to go to certain screenings for certain movies, like you have to go like, far away, which sucks. Um, and, and, you know, certain installations and certain like events would be literally all over the place. I feel like, I don’t know, maybe [00:14:00] it’d be better if they used this as a time to, I’m not saying necessarily be smaller, I’m just saying like refocus.

[00:14:07] Christina: But it’s not my, not my thing, um, to, to make those decisions. GitHub had a, had a party there, um, which was in a, a, a fun location, like a great location, but also a hard to find location. But that was fun. Um, I saw some good panels. I saw some movies. I did karaoke sober. I mean, I got drunker as it went on, but I had to do it sober to begin with, which was the most horrifying thing in my life.

[00:14:30] Christina: So like, um, I, I have so much props for you, Erin, for like going out and doing like actual, like live things, because I realized I was like, Oh, I can’t sing for shit. Like I used to have a decent voice. I don’t anymore. And you’re never more aware of that than when you’re in a karaoke room and you’re sober.

[00:14:49] Brett: I don’t remember if it was South By or CES, but I was at a karaoke bar with the N Gadget crew and Tim Stephens did Ring of Fire and [00:15:00] it was so good.

[00:15:01] Christina: Oh, he would, of course, he’d be good.

[00:15:03] Brett: yeah, and then I immediately followed him trying to do Sweet Child of Mine after a sizable number of drinks, and it went, it, I, it was, I’m still embarrassed, I’m still mortified thinking about it.

[00:15:17] Christina: Yeah, I, um, I, I started out with, with, uh, with, with, um, Taylor Swift’s I Knew You Were Trouble, and it, it was, eh, again, like, I can do that song if I’m drunk, uh, or have a little more, you know, like, liquid courage. The lyric sheet was also slightly off for, for how they were doing, like, the, the pacing on some of the, the line hits, which, like, fucked me up.

[00:15:39] Christina: Um, once I had, like, To vodka cranberries. Uh, and I was still sober. I did Madonna’s Material, girl, that went much better. But then like, as the night went on, like it was fun, but just I guess my mental health, my mental health’s. Okay, I’m, I’m still a DHD as fuck right now. Um, but it was nice to be around people, which is good for me.[00:16:00]

[00:16:00] Christina: And, um, I was able to, uh, actually run into some former in Gadget people from way back in the day. Mostly they were at the Verge now. Um, when I was at, um. South by, uh, the first day when I got in, I wound up having drinks with a lot of people at The Verge and the editor in chief of Wired and, um, some other folks.

[00:16:18] Christina: So that was nice. But yeah, no, I mean, sorry, go on.

[00:16:22] Brett: I’m sorry, just while we’re still talking about South By, was it well attended? Because, uh, both Brian Albee and David Hamilton posted pictures of their plane into Austin and it was completely empty. at the very beginning of the conference.

[00:16:39] Christina: so that’s the interesting thing and that’s I think why I have a hard time kind of like grappling like grokking like What was the attendance because I think they were trying to say, oh, you know There’s a hundred thousand people or something and and I wouldn’t doubt that But because it’s spread all over the place, I don’t know.

[00:16:55] Christina: Like I got in on Thursday night and my, I wasn’t able [00:17:00] to get a direct flight. So that says it right there. Um, and I, and I only got in as late, as early as I did because it was 800 cheaper for me to stay in a hotel longer,

[00:17:10] Brett: Mm

[00:17:11] Christina: which, okay. Um, so it was one of those things that was like, well, you know, if it’s going to be cheaper for me to stay two extra nights, I’m fine.

[00:17:21] Christina: Um, but, um, some panels were empty, some were full, like OpenAI did. Um, uh, they’re, they’re, um, uh, the, the guy who runs product for ChatGPT, who was very good. Like they should put him on stage a lot more because he was very reassuring and, and a very good speaker and like nice. And, and he was great. Like that was in one of the main ballrooms in the commission center.

[00:17:44] Christina: And it was not only packed, there was like overflow. So, and that was on, um, Um, Monday, so I think it depends. I think, I think, uh, busier over the weekend. But, but it’s hard because some of the panels were empty, some things were totally full. [00:18:00] Um, screenings for movies, because I had a platinum badge and I wanted to go to movies, was kind of a pain.

[00:18:06] Christina: If you were able to get like, they had like, kind of like an express pass. everything, kind of like the, the Disney genie pass where as long as you requested, you know, at a certain time, you could, you know, kind of guarantee your spot, but that was kind of hit or miss. So then you have to like show up and basically like, like an hour before the screening starts to get your little ticket and then wait around.

[00:18:26] Christina: And like, that’s fine. Well, but the thing is, is that like, it depends on what theater you’re at. Like if you’re at the normal Alamo draft house on Lamar, then like, okay, whatever. But like if you’re, you know, trying to do other things, it just sort of like, kind of fucks up, like. your plans to get around. But anyway, my self, my, my, my mental health update is that I’m still really ADHD.

[00:18:46] Christina: Um, but it was really nice to be around people and I had some good conversations with colleagues. So that’s it.

[00:18:51] Brett: Nice. All right. Um, I, I can go next. So, I am going on over three months now [00:19:00] without sleeping. Um, I am, um, I cannot remember at this point what it feels like to be well rested. I do not think I am manic. I do not think I’m depressed. I’m actually, considering I’m getting like three hours of sleep a night on average, um, I’m actually functioning really well.

[00:19:20] Brett: My job suddenly remembered I existed. Um, and, and I have been, I have been like inundated with work, which turns out, like, I actually enjoy working. Um, and it was, it was getting pretty scary when, for like months when no one was giving me assignments and I was just, Existing and had like nothing to report on my quarterly report.

[00:19:45] Brett: And, um, so, but I’m dealing with it and I’m dealing with life. I’m keeping the house clean. I’m cooking dinners. Um, I don’t understand how I’m doing this, which makes me think, wow, did I become like type one bipolar? Uh, [00:20:00] is something else going on? Um, I have tried three FDA approved insomnia treatments at this point.

[00:20:06] Brett: I’m. Starting Gabapentin today to see if it works. Um, I have asked my primary care physician for a referral to sleep medicine, um, to do like a sleep study and try to figure out what’s going on because I’m, I don’t have. Anxiety. I’m not having racing thoughts. I just cannot fall asleep. I fall asleep within 15 minutes of laying down.

[00:20:33] Brett: I wake up an hour later and then it’s shot for the night. Um, and I, I, this has never happened to me before. Like, yeah, I’m bipolar. I’ve had manic episodes. My manic episodes last at most a week and this is three months and I don’t know what the fuck’s going on, but it’s killing me.

[00:20:52] Jeff: And then it just like, and then it just like compounds, right? Because like the thing you need to be well asleep

[00:20:57] Brett: Yeah. Yeah. It’s killing me. [00:21:00] It’s killing me.

[00:21:00] Jeff: Maybe you shouldn’t have named your podcast Overtired.

[00:21:03] Brett: Oh, you think I jinxed it?

[00:21:05] Christina: mean, that was, I think that was my bad, actually. I think that was actually my fault, but, um,

[00:21:14] Jeff: to the you was the

[00:21:15] Brett: I remember, I remember this conversation in an elevator

[00:21:18] Christina: an elevator. Yeah.

[00:21:20] Brett: and I don’t remember who said it first, but we were both a hundred percent

[00:21:23] Christina: No, we were both a hundred percent. And yeah, I can’t remember who said it either. I think that one of us, I think said, uh, just really overtired. And then I think we were like, that’s it. That’s the name of the pod. Um, so it was definitely like a group thing, but I don’t remember exactly which one of us. Yeah.

[00:21:37] Christina: Cause we were in an elevator at the Twitter building. Um,

[00:21:41] Jeff: X. It’s called X.

[00:21:43] Christina: No, it was called Twitter then. And that’s what we’re still going to call

[00:21:45] Jeff: I just, I know I just like to troll.

[00:21:47] Christina: I, I, I know, but I like to troll back. Um, so yeah. Um,

[00:21:52] Jeff: me.

[00:21:55] Christina: No, get a, get a sleep study for sure, Brett. Cause that’s not, um, so do you [00:22:00] know definitively that you’re only like, have you like worn an Apple watch or anything?

[00:22:03] Christina: Like, do you know like how much REM sleep you’re getting or anything like that?

[00:22:06] Brett: I do wear an Apple Watch. Um, I have not actually bothered looking at stats because I look at the clock all night long. Um, like I’m not up working like

[00:22:16] Christina: No, no, no, no, no. I get that. No, but I was, what I was saying though, it’s useful. Um, if you wear your Apple watch at night, like I don’t because I baby rest. So I have to wear like the small Apple watch, which means the battery life is bullshit. And if I have to like, It’s just dumb to like sleep in it, but for me, um, and I’m not one of those people who’s yet at the point where I’m like, yeah, I’ll buy a watch to sleep in.

[00:22:36] Christina: No, I can get like a Fitbit or something. I think they still make Fitbits, but they can, um, but if you wear it, like, if you look at the stats, like it’ll actually be able to, to tell you like what amount of

[00:22:44] Brett: deep sleep

[00:22:45] Christina: sleep is happening. And, and so, um, cause that, that’ll help with the sleep study. Cause it’s bad that you’re only getting three hours of sleep, but

[00:22:54] Brett: I’m, I’m hitting, I’m hitting REM. I will have two to three [00:23:00] crazy dreams. In a night with only like a total of three hours of actual sleep. So like I fall asleep, have a crazy dream, wake up, stay awake for half an hour to an hour, and then fall asleep and have another crazy dream. And they’re so memorable.

[00:23:18] Brett: Like I remember all these dreams and I can sit and bore my partner to death with the bizarre details.

[00:23:25] Jeff: but it wasn’t you.

[00:23:27] Brett: It was you, but it didn’t look like you, but I knew it was you. And yeah, it, it was. So there’s this artist named David Usher. Uh, he was in Moist, um, but he’s an amazing solo artist. And in the U S you can’t stream anything before like the live version of the Mile End Sessions.

[00:23:49] Brett: And he has three albums before that, that I absolutely adored and can no longer find and I,

[00:23:57] Christina: his name? I’ll find it for you.

[00:23:58] Brett: David Usher, [00:24:00] I’ve looked on. Torrent sites? I cannot find it. If you find it, let me know.

[00:24:04] Christina: Yeah, I, I, I’m, I’m in private music trackers, so just gimme a

[00:24:07] Brett: okay. Um, and,

[00:24:09] Jeff: music track? Oh, we can

[00:24:10] Brett: well, so what I ended up doing, I ended up ordering actual musical CDs that I’m going to find a way to rip to MP3s so I can do this.

[00:24:22] Brett: But, I had this dream that I met this girl who, like, like, like, as was mentioned, was Elle, but wasn’t Elle. So, And they agreed to, they agreed to sing the discography with me from memory while we were having sex. And it was the weird, like

[00:24:41] Jeff: Lights on, lights off.

[00:24:43] Brett: I woke up singing lyrics to like some of my favorite David Usher songs a couple of times and then fell back into this dream where I was just singing David Usher songs with a girl while we were having what I will say was unsuccessful sex. It was, it was [00:25:00] very, it was, it was laborious,

[00:25:02] Erin: Well,

[00:25:03] Christina: so, so what, what, uh, what years do you need? 'cause I’m seeing, now I’m seeing strange words from 2007. Uh, if God had gers.

[00:25:09] Brett: Yeah. God have curse and morning orbit.

[00:25:12] Christina: Okay. Um, uh, what are hallucinations from 2003?

[00:25:16] Brett: What?

[00:25:17] Christina: There? There, there’s an album called Hallucinations.

[00:25:19] Brett: I’ve never heard that

[00:25:20] Jeff: Welcome to our new segment. Find my music.

[00:25:23] Christina: yeah, exactly. Yeah. Okay, well I’ll grab that for you.

[00:25:25] Brett: Yeah. Send me, send me everything you can

[00:25:27] Christina: There’s also little, little songs from 1998.

[00:25:30] Brett: Oh, oh my God. Little songs was what got me into David Usher. I haven’t been able to find that anywhere.

[00:25:37] Christina: Oh yeah, no, I found them all instantly. Yeah, I got

[00:25:39] Brett: my god. Save, save me. That’s amazing.

[00:25:41] Christina: Yeah, I got, I got

[00:25:42] Brett: made my day. I’ll shut up for the rest

[00:25:44] Jeff: We call him, we call him White Usher in Minneapolis.

[00:25:50] Christina: Other usher.

[00:25:51] Brett: Well, if you, if you search like Pirate Bay for David Usher, you get a bunch of stuff from David Guerra featuring Usher.[00:26:00]

[00:26:00] Christina: Usher, that makes sense.

[00:26:01] Brett: Oh

[00:26:02] Christina: Yeah. So, um, uh, I don’t know how much we want to, you know, just fuck it. Um, I’ve been part of these communities for two decades at this point. So there used to be a music tracker called Oink, uh, the Pink Palace, which was a private music tracker that was

[00:26:16] Jeff: Wait, is it like Oink colon the Pink Palace?

[00:26:18] Christina: Well, it was known as the Pink Palace, but it was called Oink, O I N K. And, um, and like it had a pig as its mascot. It was great. It was genuinely the best music site. Trent Reznor was a member. In fact, we talked about it, um, uh, during one of the times that I interviewed him, the Apple people were really not pleased with that.

[00:26:37] Christina: Um, but whatever. And uh, um, that was shut down by the feds in like nine months. Um, and then, um, uh, kind of a hydra of that called WhatCD launched, and that was great. And then WhatCD was shut down by various feds, um, this is all overseas and these people were dumb enough to host things in the United [00:27:00] States, um, in 2016.

[00:27:03] Christina: And then two, uh. Um, Music Trackers came out of the ashes of WhatCD, Redacted, and Orpheus, and I’m members of both. So, um, oh, uh, Redacted tends to have more stuff, but Orpheus tends to, um, have a pretty good mirror. So between the two of them, like, I can find most things. And then the, the great thing about them, especially, uh, Redacted, is that they have like these bounties where if you will do basically like what Brett was going to do, which, you know, buy the CDs and like rip them.

[00:27:33] Christina: Or if you buy the vinyl and will find like, like things that people really want, you know, people will give you like, um, amazing amounts of like upload credit and things like that. So, um, like,

[00:27:44] Brett: the BBS days all

[00:27:45] Christina: Oh, completely. It’s completely BBS days, but, but again, like,

[00:27:48] Brett: credit. I’ve heard, I haven’t heard upload credit for

[00:27:50] Christina: well, yeah, cause you have to maintain a ratio, but the ratio you can maintain as long as you just seed shit forever.

[00:27:55] Christina: But like, um, so if you have a seed box or if you have an always on computer, you’re fine, but yeah, no, all [00:28:00] of this is a throwback to like, you know, like literally when I was in college. So. Um, but yeah, long story short, um, there are, if it’s been physically made available, if there’s like a rip on it, I can usually find it, and I need to just get off my ass and rip one of my Taylor Swift vinyls because somebody wants a certain version off of one of those songs.

[00:28:20] Christina: My name is

[00:28:20] Brett: Upload credits.

[00:28:22] Christina: Dude, they’re willing, they’re, they’re, they’re willing to give, like, no, they’re willing to give like a terabyte of credit upload. Like I would never have to like seed anything ever again in my entire life. So I just have to actually get off my ass and rip that vinyl. Um, but yeah.

[00:28:35] Christina: Um, I will, I will get you the David Usher. Thanks.

[00:28:38] Brett: The last time I dealt with ratios and upload credits, it was still measured in kilobytes. I, Jeff, do you know, do you know, were you on BBS’s

[00:28:49] Jeff: Yeah, yeah, but like at the, like in 1994 for a minute, and then I just didn’t have a computer for a long time,

[00:28:57] Brett: And I’m assuming Erin, [00:29:00] you might be young enough that you have no idea what we’re talking about.

[00:29:03] Erin: correct. I apologize.

[00:29:05] Christina: No. Yeah, no. So this.

[00:29:06] Brett: avoid, we’ll avoid going into depth then because

[00:29:08] Christina: Yeah, no, yeah, I mean, I never used BBSes, but this was like a thing like with BitTorrent for private communities where like, to ensure that people don’t just like, like download and run, you have to make sure that you up, you seed a certain amount

[00:29:21] Brett: a seed. You got a seed.

[00:29:24] Christina: And that’s still the case on private communities, like I’m currently

[00:29:28] Brett: What is, what is the, what is the polite number of days, months to seed a download before you remove it?

[00:29:38] Christina: It depends on the tracker. Um, so, like, some places will make you seed for, like, two weeks. Like, uh, uh, uh, an audiobook, like, an audiobook tracker that I’m part of, like, makes you seed for two weeks. Some things, it’s kind of unclear, like, they kind of, like, really want you to seed forever, and so, you really want a seed box.

[00:29:56] Christina: Um, which, what that is, for, for, for the listeners who are either too young or too old, [00:30:00] it’s just a server. That host your torrent files, usually on, um, a box, uh, from some VPS, from some sketchy VPS, um, that’s probably hosted by a Hetzner or OVH in Europe. And then you remotely, like, use your torrent client that way.

[00:30:15] Christina: And um, yeah. And that way, like, if it gets nuked or whatever, you’re Well, okay, fine. Um, but, um, that way you can just kind of cede forever without having to have your computer connected. Um, but yeah.

[00:30:26] Jeff: Christina, what do you charge for a private consult? Because I want a private consult.

[00:30:34] Christina: Yeah, we’ll do it. Yeah,

[00:30:35] Jeff: I’m only half the way to what you’re describing in my life, so,

[00:30:39] Christina: Yeah, no, we can totally talk about it. And, um, honestly, a lot of these things are available through, uh, through the, the, the one technology that will never die, which is Usenet. So.

[00:30:48] Jeff: mm hmm, mm hmm,

[00:30:50] Brett: All right. So, moving along, and you’re allowed to opt out if you want to, Jeff or Erin, you want to give us a mental health update?

[00:30:59] Jeff: Erin, you go [00:31:00] ahead. If you want to go, go ahead, because mine might transition back into a question I have for you about your tour.

[00:31:05] Erin: Oh, okay, that’d be wonderful, thanks. Um, I went through a pretty bad breakup in August, and I’m still sort of dealing with that. Uh, pretty depress y, and my brain is lizard y enough, such that if The sun is out, equals sign, I am happy. If it is not out, and you live in Pittsburgh, I am not happy. Uh, and unfortunately I live in Pittsburgh, and so that’s been rough.

[00:31:34] Erin: Um, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about singledom, and um, how you’re sort of unconsciously or subconsciously treated in a friend group or in a community when you’re single. That like, there is a kind of invisibility. you, you have as a single person and that, [00:32:00] that invisibility is like really lonely. Um, I have as many friends as I did when I was in that relationship, but it just like without exclusion, like I Rolodex all of my, I’m old enough to say Rolodex, I guess.

[00:32:15] Erin: I Rolodex all of my Friends, mentally, and I’m like, we’re nominally still buds, nominally still buds, nothing’s changed, except it has. And so why? And it’s maybe a little reductive of me to be like, well, I’m single now. Um, but I do think the correlation is there and it’s just like, been bumming me out in a way that like, my, my subconscious.

[00:32:41] Erin: will get a like Victorian style, uh, plate and put like heaps of resentment on it and be like, Hey, how good does this look? And I’m like, damn, I’m like licking my lip, like pretty, pretty good. Uh, because [00:33:00] You know, I, I don’t know. It’s, it’s really, it feels, just to close the loop on this, it feels like, uh, a sort of defeat to reach out to these people and be like, hey, I’m kind of hurting.

[00:33:12] Erin: I’m, I’m a little bummed that you haven’t reached out. Like, have I wronged you? Like, what’s going on? I’m really lonely. That doing that feels either humiliating or, or, or something. Like I should, I should rise above that. I should hold out. But what is holding out getting me? Nothing. More resentment. So, I’m trying to be better about that.

[00:33:33] Brett: to reach out like that? Or can you just reach out and say, Hey, I haven’t heard from you in a while. What’s up? And then like, let it develop because yeah, like I would feel just as, I would feel just as weird as you’re talking about. If I was like, Hey, I haven’t heard from you and it hurt my feelings.

[00:33:55] Erin: So I’ve already done this,

[00:33:56] Brett: Okay. I believe

[00:33:58] Erin: two or three people.

[00:33:59] Brett: like an [00:34:00] obvious solution.

[00:34:01] Erin: For sure, for sure. Like, we’re all busy and Uh, without going into the very, uh, it feels like every podcast I listen to does this. We’ll like have, uh, we’ll make a point and that point is attributed to how bad capitalism is. So I’m going to avoid that.

[00:34:17] Erin: Right. Um, no problem, but we’re all busy because of capital. And I’ve, I’ve, I’ve just, I’ve like built this theory. Let me know your opinion about this, this real quick. This, this rashly assembled theory. Okay, so we all have a certain kind of, uh, a certain amount of energy. When you are coupled, when you’re in a relationship, when you’re in a partnership, that energy primarily goes into your partnership.

[00:34:46] Erin: What you have left to take care of your body, pay the bills. Go to the gym, whatever, um, you keep. And what’s left is usually very, very little. And so for single [00:35:00] people, all that main person energy that would go into a partnership is evenly distributed and available. But if you are single, but if you’re partnered, you don’t have that.

[00:35:11] Erin: So there’s a mismatch there. And so I’m trying to attribute my sort of resentment to a structural imbalance for which they, they’re not choosing to, to slight me, right? Um, so, so I’ve already reached out and, and at this point it’s like, Gosh, some people come in your life and some people leave and let sleeping kitties lie on your chest and uh, move on?

[00:35:38] Erin: Dot org? I don’t know.

[00:35:39] Jeff: Is it, oh God, nice work. Is it, um, is it, where does this overlap with the thing about almost like having to, the really terrible thing of almost like having to split up friends in a breakup? Does it overlap with that? Or a divorce? Yeah.

[00:35:54] Erin: I’d like to think not. I’d like to think not. These are friends that I had like, uh, independent, [00:36:00] um, of, of that partnership. So I don’t know. I don’t know.

[00:36:08] Brett: Jeff or Christina, have you guys ever been single?

[00:36:11] Jeff: Yes. I’ve been, I have been very, very epically

[00:36:16] Christina: long time. Yeah.

[00:36:18] Brett: I have, I have never been single for more than two weeks. I don’t, like, I consider that a problem. I’m not proud of that. Like, I don’t know how to be single. That’s, that’s

[00:36:27] Christina: You’re Jennifer Lopez. She, she, she, she has a movie and a documentary about that.

[00:36:32] Brett: Yeah.

[00:36:32] Christina: not joking.

[00:36:33] Brett: I believe you. I haven’t seen this.

[00:36:36] Christina: Um, so the, the documentary is better. The movie’s insane. It’s called, uh, this is, uh, me now. Or whatever. Um, uh, it, so she did like a 20 year, like, sequel to her album that had Jenny from the Block on it. And, uh, all about like her getting back together with Ben Affleck. It’s not great. Um, but the movie is insane.

[00:36:57] Christina: She spent 20 million of her own money on it. [00:37:00] It’s, it’s a choice and Amazon did distribute it, but they certainly didn’t pay for all of it. I feel positive. Um, and then, um, but it’s, it’s, it’s like, it’s insane. I wish that it were both worse or better, like it kind of needs to go like one way or the other.

[00:37:15] Christina: But the thing that makes it work is that then they made a documentary of the making of the movie. And the documentary is actually pretty fucking great. Like, she and Ben Affleck actually have really good chemistry. He really loves her. Like, he really loves her. Um, uh, which is, which is clear because he’s like, even telling her, like, he’s being very supportive of the whole endeavor, but he’s also like, being very clear, like, Don’t put your own money into this.

[00:37:41] Christina: Um, but yeah, uh, that’s kind of her whole MO is the fact that she can’t ever be single and, and that she goes from like one thing to the next. And she’s like, very clear on that. Uh, there’s also a very funny bit that’s very reminiscent of the, um, uh, uh, David Beckham and Victoria, um, uh, Beckham, uh, Netflix thing [00:38:00] where, you know, they kind of rag on each other where she’s writing this script about like her, you know, life and, and, you know, She’s like, you know, she was 28 when, and he was like, except you weren’t 28, you know, you were, you like, you were 30 or whatever.

[00:38:11] Christina: Uh, he was like, you know, even make yourself younger, like in, in the, in, in, in the, the fake version of your life or whatever, you’ve been played younger than it’s very funny. Um, but, uh, but no, yeah, that’s, that’s, that, that’s a whole thing. No, I’ve been single for sure,

[00:38:27] Brett: Okay,

[00:38:28] Christina: but it’s hard, um, when you like lose, like when you lose that, you know, you’re not in the relationship and then the other people around you, um, Um, or that were around you aren’t there, because you’re right, you only have like so much energy usually for, um, types of things and, and

[00:38:45] Brett: I think, I think there’s a certain age, I don’t know what age it is, but I think there’s an age you get to where you’re just expected to be coupled. Um, and, and there’s a stigma around being, you know, 30 [00:39:00] years old and unattached. Um, and you’re 20, sure, but maybe it’s 30, maybe, I don’t know.

[00:39:06] Christina: Yeah, I think it’s getting older, but yeah, probably 30 is 30 ish. I mean, I think it depends. Um, I definitely think, feel like it’s getting older. Cause I know, like, I don’t have kids and it used to be much more rare to be around people who don’t have kids. And now I feel like I know a lot of people who are my age or in my age range who don’t have kids.

[00:39:27] Christina: Um, some are single, um, some are not. Um, but what is hard, like it’s hard, but what is, what is hard is like to find people who are in a couple. Who don’t have kids, who are like over a certain age, like that’s more difficult. And then that kind of sucks because you’re like, okay, well, you know, it’s hard to get together with people because they, you know, have their, their kid shit to deal with, which is completely understandable, but it’s also like, if you don’t have that too, then you don’t like,

[00:39:52] Brett: no, I have definitely found my friend group consists almost entirely of coupled slash [00:40:00] polyamorous people who have no kids. Um, and, and I, people have kids and you’re like, that’s great. I love you for that. And then they just kind of disappear from the friend group. Um, But yeah, like I left my high school girlfriend for another girl.

[00:40:16] Brett: I left her for another girl. She left me. I was single for like two weeks. Um, I had another girl, the friend for like four years and it was just. Relationship after relationship and many times I have thought maybe I should just spend like two years just like in like a monk just be like single for two years and like deal with

[00:40:41] Erin: Don’t do it. do it. Never do it. I’m here from the future. I’m walking in the underworld right now. It is awful down here. Don’t do it.

[00:40:51] Jeff: Erin, is it, is the energy thing like, I, I, I’m asking based on a, just a memory of like, all of a sudden that your [00:41:00] energy thing was like really just resonated like, and, and with that energy that’s, that’s not used in, in coupledom, is there, is there ever a feeling of like, now what should I do with this energy?

[00:41:10] Jeff: Or like a pressure? Or is it, are you not in that space?

[00:41:15] Erin: I, um, I guess this is still technically my mental health corner. Um, so, so I’ve never been bored in my life. And I think the reason for that is because, uh, I have maybe father issues, and those father issues are tied to an idea that, uh, your worth is dependent on, entirely, your ability to produce things.

[00:41:44] Erin: Your productivity.

[00:41:45] Brett: so it’s not, you’ve been bored because you haven’t allowed yourself to be bored.

[00:41:50] Erin: Yeah.

[00:41:51] Brett: Interesting.

[00:41:52] Erin: Um, so I always have stuff to do and I always have music to make and I can always go for a run and I love running and I can [00:42:00] always get better at like making a pad thai or something. Like there’s always shit for me to do. I don’t know if that’s healthy. I mean, let’s, let’s call a spade a spade. It’s, it’s very likely not.

[00:42:12] Erin: Um, but that’s where my energy goes. So,

[00:42:18] Brett: side note. I have been, every time someone uses a, um, what’s the word for, like a cliche, like a, call a spade a spade, I have to question, is that racist? Does it have racist roots? I looked it up. Spade is, that phrase is not racist. It has. No racist origins. Just, just as a point of interest, like I have found so, so many of the things that I say without thinking twice about it, because it’s just always been part of the vernacular, um, have turned out to have very racist origins.

[00:42:55] Erin: Yeah,

[00:42:56] Brett: But that one, despite sounding racist, [00:43:00] weirdly isn’t.

[00:43:00] Christina: Hey, good. Fantastic.

[00:43:04] Erin: I’ll

[00:43:04] Jeff: I, I deal with that a lot with, I have two, I have two teenagers and especially my 17 year old is like really good at just giving me a little face. If I say something, I’m like, shit, just from the face. I’m like, okay, hold on. Hold on. No, I get that. I get that. Yep, I’ll try to drop that one. Nothing terrible, right?

[00:43:21] Jeff: Like subtle stuff that you’re just, you’re used to with everybody your age. You’ve already, you’ve already, like in my case, I’ve already stripped all of the most obvious, horrible stuff a long ass time ago, right?

[00:43:32] Brett: It’s just a

[00:43:33] Jeff: No, it’s just like, yeah,

[00:43:36] Christina: no, and sometimes, like, the idioms or whatever, like, you know, might have had, like, those origins, which is terrible, and I’m not defending it, but, like, language does change, you know? And so, it’s always hard to know that, too. It’s like, well, in this era, like, you know, like, in 1920, it meant this.

[00:43:50] Christina: It’s like, okay, when did it, like, culturally shift, right?

[00:43:57] Brett: I’m sorry for the tangent

[00:43:59] Christina: No, [00:44:00] go for it.

[00:44:00] Brett: but I posted a meme that talked about, it was Gandalf saying one monitor, two monitors, now where’s my cursor? And it was just, it was funny. Somebody,

[00:44:12] Jeff: it, but

[00:44:13] Brett: somebody, somebody I used to work with was like, it’s not called a cursor, it’s called a pointer. A cursor is the text insertion point and a word processor.

[00:44:22] Brett: And I’m like, yeah, I know that actually. I’m like, well, actually that’s called it. That’s called a carrot.

[00:44:28] Christina: Right. That is called a carrot.

[00:44:29] Brett: I know, I know. And I’m like, language changes. Like cursor does mean your mouse

[00:44:36] Christina: it does. It does. Like, like, they’re, they’re like technically correct. Yeah, it is pointer, but no, like, it, it, it’s, it’s changed. And we might not like that it’s changed, and we might still want to use the original thing, but it’s like, you have to accept, no, the definition of this thing is no longer, yeah.

[00:44:50] Christina: Like, like, I, I will kill people who say irregardless because it’s not a real word, but I had to give that

[00:44:56] Brett: But Webster’s, Webster’s added it.

[00:44:58] Christina: I had to give that up, right? [00:45:00] Yeah, exactly. Pedants?

[00:45:02] Brett: Yeah. Pedants, Pedants. How do we say this?

[00:45:05] Christina: Pedants? I’d probably call them pedants. Yeah,

[00:45:08] Brett: call them pants.

[00:45:10] Christina: you’re being like pedantic. So I don’t know. So I call them a pedant. Yeah.

[00:45:15] Brett: Okay. Jeff, do you wanna, do you wanna squeeze a mental health corner in here before it’s, uh, before half an

[00:45:22] Jeff: no, definitely. I, Erin, you were talking about fans. First of all, I, so I was from like 95 to like 98. I was in a band with that. I, my brother and my best friend who I started music with and, uh, we toured a lot and I put out a record. I loved that. Um, but what it gave me is that when I see a band now, my first thought is, I know what their van smells like. I mean, unless they have a bus, but usually it’s like those, those people walk on stage. I saw the band Yob recently from the Pacific Northwest, [00:46:00] Yob walked on stage and I was like, you know what? I bet that van has just a hint of good smell, kind of incense, maybe Nag Champa. I don’t

[00:46:06] Erin: for sure

[00:46:07] Jeff: know, right?

[00:46:08] Jeff: Right? But others, you’re just like, Oh Christ, I can just, I can smell that van from here.

[00:46:14] Christina: smell it from here. Yeah. I mean, I, yeah, I, I’ve never, I’ve never, um, spent a lot of time like with people like touring or whatever. So I don’t know that, but, but something tells me that most of the, most of the vans do not have a good smell.

[00:46:29] Erin: There’s a certain scent. There’s that there’s that thing about how like how all living creatures who aren’t humanoids like eventually evolve into a crab or whatever like most van scents eventually evolve into like a Cheetos.

[00:46:46] Jeff: Yes, yes!

[00:46:47] Brett: or, or, uh, corn

[00:46:48] Erin: don’t know, even if Cheetos aren’t involved, it still skews.

[00:46:52] Christina: You,

[00:46:52] Erin: so

[00:46:53] Christina: like the, the corn smell.

[00:46:55] Erin: Yeah,

[00:46:56] Brett: It’s amazing what you can get used to that you can just not [00:47:00] smell

[00:47:00] Christina: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Totally. Totally. Now, now, I, I, cause I, cause my pers, my, like, assumption, and I could be wrong on this, is that even if everyone is clean or whatever involved, like, There’s gonna be like a latent B. O. smell that just never leaves, you know, which is fine. Cheeto, yeah, totally, right, but there’s just like a latent kind of like, like B.

[00:47:18] Christina: O. smell because you’re like, yeah, that’s what, that’s what happens, like, especially, um, if you have like people who are, are sweaty. Ever, you know, in it. It’s like, yeah, okay.

[00:47:29] Jeff: Yeah,

[00:47:29] Christina: cigarettes, like,

[00:47:30] Jeff: sweaty always.

[00:47:31] Christina: sweaty, like cigarettes, maybe like stale beer. Like, I don’t know. I think about like my friend in high school, Kyle, like his car smells like what I imagined, like the van would smell like for, for a lot of vans.

[00:47:44] Brett: Quick, quick, quick, quick vote and then back to Jeff. Is this episode called Lizardy or is it called Latent Cheeto Smell?

[00:47:53] Jeff: Like light and Cheeto

[00:47:54] Christina: I like late and Cheetos smell.

[00:47:55] Jeff: Yeah. Um, okay. So why I brought up the van is, so I’ve, I’ve [00:48:00] been, um, in work has just been super intense lately and I’ve, I’ve typically always made a point of not working evenings and weekends, even if it’s at the cost of, you know, meeting deadlines just because I don’t want my work to be that in my life.

[00:48:13] Jeff: And, um, and, uh, and also I’ve been working with like a client that I just don’t love or relate to or feel like any kind of connection to. So why does this matter? Um, My experience of being in bands, I mean, really from the eighth grade, but like definitely going out and like making your not living together, um, on tour is like, I, I was in a band with who I loved.

[00:48:40] Jeff: One of them was my brother. I love these guys. I loved being close to them. I loved being squished in with them. Um, And, and we were on a mission and we made music. We really loved, um, we made music that like was very intentional, something we meant to do, right? Like we, everything was, we meant to do it. Um, it wasn’t, we weren’t falling [00:49:00] into anything.

[00:49:01] Jeff: And, um, and we felt such a connection. And then you go out on the road and you are like a rogue, um, you know, band of, of whatever. And, and that feeling is one that I don’t think many people know. Um, and I don’t think many people know the feeling of, Like, almost lawlessness, um, like nothing applies to you, uh, in a way that’s really beautiful.

[00:49:23] Jeff: I, I, I love the feeling of only eating at truck stops and, and just, you know, like being in sort of the weird back lanes of, of, of capitalist America, really, if you’re at truck stops, right? That’s what it is. Um, and, and, I loved that feeling so much. We run a small record label, so you also had that feeling with the record label.

[00:49:42] Jeff: It’s just a couple people there and they’re fighting for you, you know, if they’re doing their job well. Um, and it’s you against the club owners, most of the most part, right? Like, um, sometimes you against the drunkest person in the club, but like, that feeling of, of shared mission. is one that I, I [00:50:00] realized, and I realized over and over again, I need and demand, um, to a point that’s unrealistic.

[00:50:05] Jeff: And, and sometimes when I’m unhappiest at my jobs in my, you know, like, I don’t know, 20 some years of career now, um, what I’m unhappy about is I resent having to try to push something forward with people I don’t Feel a sense of mission with, um, or that sense of just like really intense, sort of like going against everything to do this thing you love and, and not worrying about, um, what it means exactly at any given moment, just knowing that in the, in the doing of it.

[00:50:34] Jeff: Right. And, uh, and, and so I am, you just, uh, you helped me make that connection. I haven’t made in a long time that like, what’s been hard is I’ve not only been working too much to hit a deadline, which is over now. But I’ve been doing it in a way that’s like, I feel totally isolated and alone. I don’t feel like I have mission partners, um, and who needs that shit?

[00:50:53] Jeff: I mean, we all get it, but who needs it?

[00:50:55] Christina: No, it sucks. It’s the worst.

[00:50:57] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:50:58] Christina: And, and,

[00:50:58] Jeff: I don’t know if that,

[00:50:59] Erin: [00:51:00] So your mental health is good then?

[00:51:01] Jeff: I mean, it’s getting better. Cause I cleared this, this deadline, but I had probably one of the hardest professional weeks I’ve ever had. Like I, I had physiological results that are like impacts of it. That were like, they scared me. I was like, I can’t die like this. Like, it’s not worth it.

[00:51:17] Jeff: I do like my work overall. Like I it’s meaningful work, but like, I don’t know. I can’t die over this. Like I had a scary, scary moment where I was like, wait, what’s this? What’s this? Um, and, uh, and yeah, the, the merry band and not always merry band of, of roving rogues is, uh, is a model that I always insist on having a little bit of.

[00:51:37] Jeff: And just the last thing I’ll say about that. It’s almost like when, um, when I first took like anxiety medication, the, the reason my, like the way my therapist convinced me was like, What you need at the very least is a reference point for what it feels like to not feel like what you always feel like, right?

[00:51:52] Jeff: You just, you, you want to be able to say, Oh, okay, now I have felt something different. And then see what that means. See how that [00:52:00] causes you to make whatever different decisions, ask different questions, whatever it is. And like having that reference feeling of being a feeling truly that free, even though you were just like, I was a dishwasher, I made no money.

[00:52:11] Jeff: I was using my mom’s Amoco gas card. to get by like microwave sandwiches at the gas station. But like I felt free and, and spacious. And so having that reference is both a blessing and a curse anyway.

[00:52:28] The Question of Black Metal

[00:52:28] Jeff: Um, but my question for you then is actually a black metal question. Um, I am curious where black metal came into your life first and then where it came into your art.

[00:52:40] Erin: Oh cool, what a considerate question, thank you. I,

[00:52:43] Brett: yeah.

[00:52:44] Erin: I had a guitar teacher at a really young age who was into metal. At that point, uh, I had gone through a few phases in which I thought Metallica was the of musical achievement. And then I heard [00:53:00] Dream Theater and Rush,

[00:53:01] Christina: We were all there. Yeah.

[00:53:02] Erin: right, music that doesn’t sound like this.

[00:53:05] Erin: is beneath me and beneath all of us. Why is anyone else listening to anything else

[00:53:09] Jeff: There are good drummers? Yeah.

[00:53:12] Erin: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Uh, and then I started taking classical guitar lessons with this teacher, but he was a metalhead, and I knew that he was a metalhead, and I talked to him about those bands, and he was not into Dream Theater, and I’m like, what are you, what are you like if not that?

[00:53:28] Erin: And he was like, Catatonia, Opeth, Uh, Bloodbath, Bathory, Pestilence, Atheist. And I’m like, uh, what are those bands? Uh, not that they’re all

[00:53:40] Jeff: Shows you the logos. You can’t read them. Yes.

[00:53:43] Erin: Correct. And so he burned me some discs and just spun those a lot, especially Catatonia. And I just fell in love with it. And I am so thankful for that because if I heard black metal for the first time as an [00:54:00] adult, as an adult who really like metal.

[00:54:04] Erin: I’d be like, get this away from me. What is this noise? This is awful sonic sound. Awful sonic sound. Cool, cool phrase. Um, . So I’d always been a metalhead, but I had never, I went to school for music. I was in like math rock bands, did that kind of thing, but I was never in a metal band myself as a metalhead.

[00:54:24] Erin: And so I was on a jog a couple years ago, uh, and it just like. hit me, inspiration hit me, it never does this clearly, but I was like, oh my god, I need to be a one person black metal band with a headless white seven string guitar and it needs to be called Genital Shame.

[00:54:43] Jeff: Yes. It all became clear to

[00:54:46] Brett: I was just reading the review in the Pittsburgh City Pages and it talks about your headless white seven string guitar.

[00:54:53] Jeff: do you have that near you?

[00:54:54] Brett: I do. It’s in the show notes.

[00:54:56] Jeff: I mean, do you have that guitar near you,

[00:54:58] Erin: I sold it.

[00:54:59] Jeff: You sold it. [00:55:00] Okay. Got it.

[00:55:00] Erin: I sold it. It got me

[00:55:01] Jeff: vision, but we’re going to iterate.

[00:55:04] Erin: to iterate. We’re working with a, you know, a, a bullet, uh, fender and a, and a parts caster telly now we’ve moved on. Um, but I actually feel a little uncomfortable calling General Shame black metal because it’s not true as, as people in the scene would say cult CVLT.

[00:55:25] Erin: Black metal, but it really, uh, pushes those kinds of things. My tastes are quite sugary. I really love melody. Uh, so I try to make my music as melodic as possible when possible, but still maintaining that, that sort of like the harshness that I would reject as an adult who had never listened to it.

[00:55:48] Jeff: What are the, what are the metal bands that have that kind of like sugary ness that you’re talking about that you love?

[00:55:56] Erin: I don’t want to say I’m in a league of my own, but there are [00:56:00] not many. A friend’s band called Agriculture does it. There’s a band called Liturgy that a lot of people like

[00:56:07] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:56:08] Erin: that do that. My maybe favorite metal band is called Kralis from Brooklyn. They do that sometimes. Very melodic, yet still really crushing and brutal.

[00:56:20] Erin: Um, so yeah, I like, get you a metal that could do both, you know,

[00:56:25] Jeff: get you a medal that can do both. That’s a great answer. I love it.

[00:56:28] Erin: Thanks.

[00:56:30] Jeff: Awesome. Well, what do we got?

[00:56:34] The Dimspirations Store is open

[00:56:34] Brett: Can I, can I plug my shit?

[00:56:36] Christina: Yeah. Please. Let’s talk. Let’s talk about your

[00:56:39] Brett: We talked last time, last time we were on a few weeks back, I had launched Demspirations or Demspire. me, uh, with all of the Demspirations I’ve made over the last couple of years, I just wanted to plug that there’s now merch. If you go to Demspire. me slash store. You can buy what I would [00:57:00] say are very clever t shirts, coffee mugs, and even calendars.

[00:57:05] Brett: Um, I, I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but it’s, they’re fucking, they’re genius. They’re unbelievable. Um, and it’s amazing that I’ve made a total of 170 off

[00:57:19] Jeff: Yes.

[00:57:20] Brett: off this store

[00:57:21] Jeff: walking around money. You don’t

[00:57:22] Christina: I’m

[00:57:22] Jeff: man. That’s good. Like,

[00:57:24] Christina: I’m going to be honest. I’m actually really impressed by that. I like would not have expected. Like that’s actually much higher than I would have expected. Like if I could be completely candid.

[00:57:32] Brett: But the, the, the most fun part of it is I made yesterday in under half an hour, I made a URL shortener for dimspire. me. So I can, I can use that. dim. moi, M O I, dim. moi, slash, and then like, you know, your typical, like, bit. ly four, four letter, uh, string, and I can shortlink any of the dimspirations on the site, and I can [00:58:00] also link them if, if the dimspiration is called, say, uh, self critical in the URL, I can just do dim.

[00:58:07] Brett: moi, slash, self critical, and it’ll link to the full URL with, uh, With, um, with UTM query strings. So I can actually track, yeah, I, I built a URL shortener. It’s way easier than you think.

[00:58:22] Christina: No. So I actually, I was, I was going to ask you what you use for your, your URL shortener, because I need, I have one that I have for like my, uh, my drop a cloud, um, uh, account or whatever, but I’ve wanted to either build my own or Like, have my own host, because I have a number of different short URLs that I would like to use.

[00:58:39] Christina: So, I’m curious how you built yours. If you did it completely from scratch, if you used another

[00:58:44] Brett: Yeah, I use, there’s a, there’s a repo, there’s an 11 year old repo on GitHub that I’ll link in the show notes, um, that I just kind of hacked. It’s PHP. Um, it’s just PHP and MySQL. And, uh, it’s, it’s, [00:59:00] it took me. Maybe 15 minutes to hack it to do exactly what I wanted it to do. Um, and then like drop it in an HT access file that redirects and, and it’s done.

[00:59:11] Brett: So like I had to register the domain, uh, like the short domain. I had to fully host it so that I could run PHP scripts on it. And then. That was it. Like, the script takes half an hour, and if you know PHP at all, you can, you can do whatever you want with it.

[00:59:29] Jeff: awesome.

[00:59:30] Brett: Yeah, I’m pretty proud of that. I was so excited. And it fucking, when you post one of these short URLs to a social media service, it still gets the full Open Graph preview

[00:59:42] Christina: Oh, nice. Because,

[00:59:43] Brett: And Summary and

[00:59:44] Christina: yeah, because you put that in. That’s nice.

[00:59:46] Brett: right? Cause it’s an actual redirect,

[00:59:48] Christina: Right. Oh, okay. Got it.

[00:59:49] Brett: a 301 redirect. Yeah, it’s pretty, it’s pretty awesome.

[00:59:53] Brett: I love it. Anyway, that’s it. That’s my whole plug. Um, if you guys want to move on to [01:00:00] Graftitude, we can, we have time for it.

[01:00:02] Grapptitude

[01:00:02] Jeff: Yeah, let’s do it.

[01:00:04] Brett: All right. Um, is Jeff, is this, is the one on the, is the one on the list other than mine, yours, okay, why don’t you kick it off with that? Cause I love this one.

[01:00:17] Jeff: Sure. Um, so I have been using, I have been using intense, like, if I’m saying I’m working 10 hour days, which again, I try not to fucking do, I do, I keep busy with other shit. Not unlike you, Erin, and that where it’s just like, I grew up with a dad where it’s like, it never is, never is resting. And, and that’s just the model I learned.

[01:00:35] Jeff: The law, I, I think I integrated that I need to follow to be a member of this family. He wasn’t pushing it on me in this case, right? But it was so strong. I didn’t even, I only lived with him in the summers and that’s how strong it was. Anyway. Um, so I was working these 10 hard days. I bet I spent eight of them inside of Jupyter labs, notebooks, um, and doing just.

[01:00:54] Jeff: Python stuff, text manipulation stuff. I was building a, a kind of, um, building some [01:01:00] API based scripts that were pulling out all kinds of information to put into like a custom database, and then working with that database and doing all kinds of weird, cool shit with it. Um, and in the past, like I’m not a programmer, like I’m, I’ve, I, you know, as I’ve probably said on this program, like I’m Python literate in that, like I can read it, but not speak it and I can adjust it and I can make it do some things differently than how it’s written, but I’m not going to sit down and write it.

[01:01:24] Jeff: ChetchiPT changed that for me for reasons that are good and bad for the world. Um, but for me, it was like, I know how to talk computationally to, to the thing that I need to make the script, whether that’s a person or a thing. Um, Brett, I see you. Uh, and, and I, I can then be, what’s nice is I can just be in relationship with this stuff all by myself for hours at a time.

[01:01:46] Jeff: Um, and, and so anyway, I’ve loved this and I, and I typically do work with Python and because I’m, I don’t have like a. Workflow for this stuff, because they didn’t come up as a programmer. I’m very messy. Like I write a script, I run [01:02:00] it. I write another script. Sometimes there’s 16 versions of the script in the folder by the time I’m done.

[01:02:03] Jeff: And I get confused about whatever Jupyter notebooks for people that don’t know, um, allow you. To essentially open up like, I don’t know if you call it an IDE, but an environment in your web browser.

[01:02:14] Brett: It’s a

[01:02:15] Christina: They’re called notebooks. It’s a ruffle, but yeah, or, but yeah, they call them notebooks. Yeah. But yeah, it’s a ruffle.

[01:02:20] Jeff: And so you’re, you’re able to open this up and just start running your scripts sequentially. Um, you can, you don’t have to be sequential.

[01:02:25] Jeff: You can just have a bunch of scripts in there and run them as you want. You set your variables at the top and, and just start working your way down this notebook, um, to kind of iterate on, on the script or the, or whatever it is you’re trying to work on. It could just be a function. It could

[01:02:38] Brett: And the notebook part comes in because you can write, you can literally write out everything that it’s doing and then embed the script and then run

[01:02:46] Jeff: You have basically you do everything in these cells. The cell can be marked down. It can be code. Um, the code is executable. Um, and, and there’s all kinds of other customization. But anyway, so the notebooks themselves have changed my [01:03:00] life. Um, because not only am I able to Um, iterate, but I’m able to follow my crazy line of thinking and I’m able to mark where the points where I’m like, yes, this is what I come back to all this other stuff.

[01:03:11] Jeff: I’m probably going to want to just delete at some point, but I’m going to come back to this. And it allows me also, when I get mixed up, And I’ve created like three or four notebooks when I only needed to stick with one. Um, it allows me to just go back systematically and, and, and build a new notebook that is everything I need.

[01:03:27] Jeff: It works perfectly for all of the ways in which my brain doesn’t work right, like a programmer. Um, and then it also just like amplifies the ways in which it does. And so the, but the cool thing about Jupyter labs, I’ve, I’ve played with Jupyter notebooks for years. Jupyter labs is somewhat newer. It’s not that new.

[01:03:43] Jeff: And it allows you to actually

[01:03:44] Christina: yeah, they’re the version that you use. Like they updated it. It was, it was earlier. It was, it was sometime in 2023. It got a pretty big update. Sorry, go on.

[01:03:53] Jeff: Yeah, well, what’s great about it is a notebook in the, in the, just like notebook sense was just a notebook. It was a web [01:04:00] page, but Jupyter labs allows you to have all these different columns, you can put a terminal in, you can have a couple of notebooks open. You can have a markdown file open. There’s like all this different, uh, you can just completely configure your workspace and you’re never having to leave.

[01:04:13] Jeff: I’m not having to dip out to go to my terminal. I’m not having to dip out to go to my text editor. Like everything is there. And man, it. The result of that was I have never started a large initiative that involves me trying to figure out coding, which in the old days was like Stack Exchange, just like grinding in Stack Exchange, getting yelled at, getting helped.

[01:04:33] Jeff: And, um, and I don’t, I struggle to finish big things, which is like a huge issue for me. And. Because of this tool, I was able to launch into something that was way more ambitious than I had any right to launch into and then fucking land it because the workflow and the tool just matched my brain perfectly.

[01:04:52] Jeff: And I could not be more grateful because what I know now compared to what I knew two months ago when I started this project is like, it’s the kind of [01:05:00] growth I’ve as like a programmatic person for More than a decade. And it was in between the chat GPT and this, it was possible for me to do it, which is like a really cool feeling for me.

[01:05:13] Christina: I’m so happy that you had that experience and note, um, uh, the, the, the Jupiter Labs, um, uh, their IDE thing and, and, and like their notebook, um, interface is great. One thing I will point out for anybody out there who, if you are already like really into, um, Visual Studio Code, since 2001 and I put a, oh not 2001, 2021, I put a link in, in our show notes as well.

[01:05:36] Christina: The native, um, Jupyter notebook support or notebook support in, in, in code is really, really good. So, um,

[01:05:44] Jeff: pretty too. Unlike Jupyter labs.

[01:05:47] Christina: Yeah, they take a slightly different approach, so you, some people might prefer, you know, like the, the, the, the, the Jupyter IDE, um, or, or, you know, the notebook approach. But if like, if you, for somebody who already uses a lot of things in VS Code [01:06:00] for writing, for other things, because I know a lot of people who will use VS Code, um, for writing Primarily for writing in Markdown and stuff like that.

[01:06:06] Christina: Um, the mark, the, the, the native, um, notebook support is really, really, really good. And then there are things like, for instance, like at, at GitHub, like we even have like a, an issues notebook because there’s a, um, there’s a notebook API available for Visual Studio Code where people can build their own, um, extensions that, that do, um, very specific notebooky things.

[01:06:26] Christina: So like, uh, there’s one for GitHub issues, for instance, um, which is great because then you can actually, like, Fuck around with your issues and your PR queries and do all of your testing and stuff there like in your, in your REPL and your text editor without having to

[01:06:41] Jeff: like, it’s reproducible. Like I remember the first time I even saw Jupyter, Notebooks was at a, uh, investigative reporters and editors conference. They have, they have a wing called the National Institute of Computer Assisted Reporting. It’s still called that, um, from back in the days when journalists would go rent space at like card, you [01:07:00] know, card computers.

[01:07:01] Jeff: Um, but anyway, the LA Times, like, uh, data desk people, they actually not only make data available that they use, but they make Jupyter notebooks available. So you can just start working with it the way they did and kind of follow along. And that’s, that’s a very gracious thing to do.

[01:07:17] Brett: Yeah. Nice.

[01:07:18] Jeff: mine.

[01:07:19] Christina: That’s awesome.

[01:07:20] Brett: All right. Christina, I love yours. I want to ask Erin, are you joining us for the Graptitude? I totally neglected to give you a heads up on

[01:07:29] Erin: I expected it. Um.

[01:07:33] Brett: You expected me to fail? Oh.

[01:07:35] Erin: what I, exactly what I meant. I can make it real quick. It has oldie but goodie energy. Um, App Cleaner,

[01:07:43] Brett: Oh,

[01:07:44] Christina: Yes.

[01:07:46] Erin: Right, yeah, so new version of Ableton came out. Wanted to get rid of the older one. I use it all the time. I just used it recently so it was on my, on my mind, but um, App Cleaner, yep.

[01:07:58] Jeff: And it just cleans it out.[01:08:00]

[01:08:00] Brett: does

[01:08:00] Erin: Mm hmm,

[01:08:00] Christina: app installer?

[01:08:01] Brett: does anyone know what the difference between AppCleaner and AppDelete would be?

[01:08:08] Jeff: Is it that app cleaner goes and looks for all the preference files and

[01:08:10] Christina: I was going to say, I’ve never used AppDelete. I’ve always just used AppCleaner.

[01:08:14] Brett: AppDelete uses like some pretty basic Unix find commands to find like every permutation of an app’s, uh, name or bundle ID and it’s, it’s brute, it’s brute

[01:08:29] Jeff: That sounds risky.

[01:08:30] Brett: It does, it does a really good job. Um, Hazel also does pretty good app cleaning, just removing the, the, uh, the, uh, the executable and the preference files.

[01:08:43] Brett: Um, but I’ve, I’ve, I have not actually tried AppCleaner.

[01:08:46] Christina: So AppCleaner, so AppDelete, um, I, I, do you have a link for that one? Because if you search, if you Google for that, uh, obviously, especially now with their AI bullshit, like you can’t find anything. Um, but AppCleaner, I’ve been using [01:09:00] for probably 18 years, I want to say. Um. AppCleaner. AppCleaner. Because it’s a freeware one, um, like it, it, they, they, they recently updated their icon, which is, which is great, but it’s like a free maxsoft.

[01:09:11] Christina: net is like, um, where it lives, but like, it used to look like kind of like a recycle, um, like, um, uh, bag, uh, like for, for, uh, for, for your, for your apps. Um, but the, the icon has been updated. Um,

[01:09:27] Brett: I found a review of AppDelete that does not link to AppDelete. Um, maybe it doesn’t even exist anymore.

[01:09:34] Christina: Yeah, so AppCleaner, because there used to be a lot of other ones, and I can’t remember what they used to be called, but like, most of them don’t, haven’t been updated in a while. Um, and I mean this, and obviously you can use other tools, like CleanMyMac has a good uninstaller built in, and there’s some other things, but what I like about AppCleaner, um, is that like, Ableton is a perfect example.

[01:09:54] Christina: Like sometimes, like, things will just be held in, Random fucked up places and their [01:10:00] uninstall programs don’t always work. And sometimes there is an uninstaller and sometimes there’s not. And it’s, uh, like, uh, yeah. So I, I, I’m also like a big plus one on, um, on AppCleaner.

[01:10:13] Jeff: awesome. I’m going to try that.

[01:10:14] Brett: Can we just talk for like 30 seconds about how generative AI was cool in the beginning, but it feeds off of the contents of the internet and now a non trivial portion of the internet is produced by, by ChatGPT and ChatGPT is feeding off of its own fucked up information and create, like it’s incestuous.

[01:10:39] Brett: It’s this like series of inbreeding.

[01:10:41] Christina: the, the, the, the, the snake is eating itself. Yeah. Well, and it sucks too, because like some of them are different. So like the, the Microsoft Copilot, not to be confused with GitHub Copilot. Don’t get me started. Um, The, like, which used to be like Bing, Copiler, or whatever, is actually pretty good and is [01:11:00] more up to date on certain things, but, like, to your point, you know, it can, yeah, it’s all kind of like feeding itself, but the Google results, I don’t know what the fuck Google is doing.

[01:11:11] Christina: Like, they’re, they’re, they’re so proud. They’re like, we, we, we, we, we invented Transformers. Yeah, but you, you, you didn’t productize it and, and your product sucks. Like the Google, you know, just the AI results that it’ll give you at the beginning, it’s like sometimes they’ll sort of be there, but a lot of times it’s just like a mashup of bad things.

[01:11:28] Christina: And I’m like, this is the worst of everything. Like this is genuinely the worst of all of it.

[01:11:33] Brett: I run a, I run a plugin in Firefox that gives me chat GPT results in DuckDuckGo. So, and the sidebar, and they are getting progressively worse. Um, like if I’m searching for something that was answered on like StackExchange, I’ll get, I’ll get a legit, Answer, but it won’t be better than DuckDuckGo’s own instant answer version, summarizing the accepted answer from a StackOverflow [01:12:00] question.

[01:12:00] Brett: Anyway.

[01:12:00] Jeff: That’s awesome. That that still holds up.

[01:12:05] Brett: Okay. Uh, Christina, I want to hear about

[01:12:07] Christina: Yeah, so mine, and actually you have used this before, so you can talk about it too, but I actually saw this on Hacker News of all places. I hate it when, when good things are found there. I’m kidding. Um, it’s the commenter. It’s the, the, the commenters are the problem there. Not the, not

[01:12:24] Jeff: Big time. Oh yeah. I don’t even look at that shit.

[01:12:26] Christina: no, but the curation is

[01:12:28] Jeff: Love the curation.

[01:12:31] Christina: is an app called Monodraw. And it’s an ASCII art editor for Mac, but it makes it really easy to draw like, um, uh, you know, kind of like ASCII charts and other things. And like I, I,

[01:12:42] Brett: Not ANSI, but ASCII,

[01:12:44] Christina: right. And like, I’ve used, um, like, uh, Mermaid and, and things like that before, obviously, but Mermaid is, is kind of a lot, um, even though GitHub Flavor Markdown, um, does support Mermaid now, yay.

[01:12:57] Christina: Um, like, that, you know, um, [01:13:00] That, that’s a lot to kind of keep in mind. But yeah, this is just a really nice app for building, um, ASCII, um, um, you know, charts and, and, um, the way that, that it kind of like, um, the way you can focus in on, you know, the individual aspects that you want, like they have a really good, um, like a tutorial, um, Getting Started thing, which will kind of show you, um, how a lot of different things work in it.

[01:13:24] Christina: And it’s very similar how it’s set up to any other, uh, graphics editor, but it’s helping you create things that are actually pure ASCII. So it’s really great. So, um,

[01:13:37] Brett: figlet and monodraw, you can make some kickass

[01:13:40] Christina: Yeah, and, and, and you could do mind mapping stuff too if you wanted to do it for that. Um, and then what I, I have to say what I appreciate, like what made me buy it, I wasn’t even in a position, like I actually sent this to our, our group, uh, uh, thread. I think I was actually in Austin. I wasn’t actually like in a position to install it on a Mac.

[01:13:57] Christina: I, I just, I saw it and I was like, Oh, this looks pretty cool. [01:14:00] I’m going to, I’m, I’m sending this to this, uh, to, to, to our chat to remind myself about it and also to remind myself for, Gratitude, um, but when I was like reading through the, the, the process, like the, the creator of this was like, I don’t have any sort of DRM.

[01:14:17] Christina: I don’t, um, you know, I, I trust my users implicitly. I’m not putting any sorts of, um, Anything there. And I was like, okay, instant 10. Like it’s 10 bucks, you know, then the tax, but like when you go to the purchase page, it says Monodrug does not use activation or any other form of DRM. We have complete trust in our customers.

[01:14:34] Christina: Fuck yeah. Right. Like, and it’s really hard for app developers as, as you know, more than anyone, Brett, like. To this climate that we’re in, like there was a recent study that came out that shows like most subscription apps don’t make any money and we know that, um, by once apps make even less and, um, you know, people will definitely try to get one over on you and do all kinds of shady shit, which I get because we were talking about downloading stuff illegally earlier and so I’m part of the problem.

[01:14:59] Christina: I’m a hypocrite. [01:15:00] I’m not claiming that I’m perfect, but I am saying like when I see any developers make

[01:15:04] Jeff: So much negative self talk.

[01:15:06] Christina: Well, I’m just being honest. Like I’m not a hypocrite, right? Like I’m a, I mean, I am a hypocrite, but I’m not like. a liar about it, if that makes any sense, right? Like, I’m, I’m self aware enough to know about my hypocrisies, um, and, and call myself out on them.

[01:15:19] Christina: But having said that, like, this is an app, like, it’s well designed, it’s well maintained, it’s a good backup, um, it’s 10 bucks, and I really appreciate the fact that, like, you know, they’re being, like, as, like, upfront about it. Yeah, fuck it. We’re not gonna do any of the, the stuff that we could do to maybe make our app Not abused as much.

[01:15:41] Christina: So,

[01:15:42] Brett: For anyone, for anyone too young to know what ASCII art means, um, I would say it’s, it’s, it’s, It’s artwork using standard characters on your keyboard, and it will only work in fixed width fonts. Um, so if you’re writing a README for a [01:16:00] GitHub repository, or you’re, I don’t know, posting to Usenet, Um, like, you can get away with some, some very interesting artwork that, In, in a variable with font, like most like social media sites will display your, your tweet in or whatever, it’ll, it’ll get screwed up, but you’ve seen this, like I’ve seen Twitter posts.

[01:16:21] Brett: that use ASCII art and you can make some crazy stuff with this because it really is like it’s Photoshop for, I mean, you’re not getting layers and filters and all of that because what would you do with them?

[01:16:34] Christina: Right, right. But, but,

[01:16:35] Brett: it, yeah,

[01:16:36] Christina: can do really good stuff. And

[01:16:37] Brett: I guess it’s more like, it’s more like Illustrator. It’s more like Illustrator for ASCII art.

[01:16:42] Christina: Yeah, actually, that’s a much better, um, probably, um, yeah, it is a lot more like Illustrator. Even the way that the app works is definitely, um, like that. Uh, but, but it’s great. And like, yeah, if you wanted to make ASCII art for some reason, because you like terminal shit, or you want to do a retro game, or again, like you want to make your README file more readable, [01:17:00] or if you’re writing in plain text, All of us, I think, on this panel are fans of, you know, like, like you could put this in, in, in your Jupyter notebook, right?

[01:17:10] Christina: Like you could have it alongside this.

[01:17:11] Jeff: start putting ASCII art

[01:17:13] Christina: I mean, you could,

[01:17:14] Jeff: any fucking work done.

[01:17:15] Christina: I mean, I mean, I mean, you could, or if you could just like build like something out, like if you just needed to have like a graphical, like overview of your REPL before, you know, you, you were able to kind of click through. It’d probably be super fluid to be completely clear, but it’s there.

[01:17:26] Christina: Anyway, it’s a fun

[01:17:28] Brett: Alright, uh, last, last one in the round. Um, so I, I’ve used font agent for years, um, cause I have a fairly large font collection and it just,

[01:17:40] Jeff: to brag.

[01:17:41] Christina: Not to, not to brag or anything. How many, how many of those have you paid for and how many of them have you

[01:17:45] Brett: I paid for most of them. Like I, I tend to, I tend to buy font bundles, uh, when they’re available. Like I will, if a font really blows my mind, I will spend money on an individual font, but like, For the stuff I do, [01:18:00] like, I just, I want a selection of handwritten fonts. I want a selection of display, uh, sans serif fonts, etc.

[01:18:07] Brett: And so I’ve collected hundreds over the years, and I’ve always used Font Agent, which is not cheap, and has ceased to function. Um, as of Sonoma, it just doesn’t. So I went searching for a new, uh, font manager, and I got a bunch of recommendations. I tried a bunch out. What I ended up on is one called Typeface.

[01:18:33] Brett: And it’s just got a really slick UI. It will show you, like, you can punch in your example text. It can show you a font in like, uh, web or book or, or magazine formats. Like you can see how the body text will look and everything. Um, easy to search, easy to tag, easy to categorize. Um, and it basically, for what I was actually [01:19:00] using FontAgent for, it does just as good a job.

[01:19:03] Brett: I can’t remember the price. It was not terribly

[01:19:06] Christina: It’s not, it’s also, it’s on set up, um, but it’s also not expensive as I recall. Um, cause it is, let me look at it. It is, it’s 37 for one user.

[01:19:16] Brett: Yeah, like permalicense, not, not subscription,

[01:19:19] Christina: Um, no, yeah, yeah, no, it’s permalicense. It’ll unlock all the pro features and then you get new updates for 12 months. So it’s one of those things, but, but it is a permalicense thing.

[01:19:28] Christina: And I don’t, I don’t really recall how often they actually add new features. Like that’s, you know, one of those things that it’s, it’s not like the, like I think like, like

[01:19:36] Brett: long as, as long as they keep it functioning, I’m okay.

[01:19:39] Christina: know they do and I, because I’ve been using this for a long time because it’s part of set up. And I was similar to you.

[01:19:43] Christina: I was using, what was the, um, what was the app that the, the sketch guys had, they sold it. Um,

[01:19:53] Brett: I don’t remember,

[01:19:54] Christina: there, there was like, there, but there was like a, a font manager app, um,

[01:19:58] Brett: was it something [01:20:00] B? Did it have B in

[01:20:01] Christina: no, um, and it wasn’t the suitcase cause that’s the really expensive

[01:20:05] Brett: Yeah, suitcase is

[01:20:07] Christina: Suitcase is stupid, um,

[01:20:09] Brett: the court, guys.

[01:20:10] Christina: and if people are asking why should you use a font manager instead of using font book, that’s not a bad question.

[01:20:15] Christina: Well, here’s the thing. For most people, if you have a small number of fonts,

[01:20:18] Brett: Yeah, if

[01:20:19] Christina: font book is

[01:20:19] Brett: got 20 to 50 fonts, font book is great. If you have 300, 400 fonts,

[01:20:24] Christina: right.

[01:20:25] Brett: book is unmanageable.

[01:20:27] Christina: and the issue is that, um, uh, what happens is, and it’s less of an issue as computers get more and more powerful, but the issue is, is that every time you load an application that can have access to fonts, it takes forever to load all those resources.

[01:20:40] Christina: And so it can slow things down. And so if you’re using, you know, Photoshop, or if you’re using Illustrator, or if you’re using another design program, like that can really become a bottleneck, um, and slow things down. So, um, again, this is like, It’s becoming less of an issue, especially like Adobe products now, you kind of don’t need it because of the way that their cloud font stuff works.

[01:20:59] Christina: You can kind of [01:21:00] enable sets and whatnot, but that’s sort of the thing you can do with, with a font manager is you can kind of say, okay, I want to enable these sets for right now. And so now when I’m using this particular context, it will have these enabled because this is what I’m using for this project, but I don’t need to use all these other ones.

[01:21:14] Christina: But I do know, for instance, like, but there’s some, for instance, like, Mymonospace fonts that I use for coding and whatnot. I have those installed in FontBook all times, right? But there are, if you’ve got like, if you’re like Brett and I and you’re a font hoarder and you’ve got like thousands and thousands of variants and I’m like, I don’t need this all the time, but I would like to potentially be able to browse these, um, in an easy to access way.

[01:21:38] Christina: Something like Typeface is great. What I also like about Typeface is that it does a good job of being able to, um, go through like, uh, Google fonts and other. Uh, services like that and help you easily download from there, which you can do through Homebrew and other sources, but like this is visual. So,

[01:21:55] Brett: Yeah. And it’s, it’s really, it’s beautiful night. Like as far as a Mac app [01:22:00] goes, it’s got all your nice, smooth transitions and like, and native UE. And yeah, it’s, it was the best that I tried. I am enjoying it. And like you said, like being able to temporarily activate like a set of fonts. Uh, when you need them without like with font agent, I was, I was I would go through my reboot process and for about five minutes after a reboot, it would just be notification after notification of like, we’ve activated all of these fonts that you didn’t specifically, they’re auto activated, but I, it got messy, it got real messy.

[01:22:36] Brett: So I’m enjoying, Typeface is cheaper and simpler and I enjoy it.

[01:22:42] Erin: Did you hear about this from Merlin?

[01:22:44] Brett: I did not, did you?

[01:22:46] Erin: I think so, yeah.

[01:22:48] Brett: I heard, I heard about it, I asked the question, I was like, Fontage didn’t stop working for me on Mastodon, what are you guys using? And Mastodon is I know it’s not for everybody. I know it’s mostly [01:23:00] for nerds, um, tech people, but I get answers so quickly to all of life’s problems.

[01:23:09] Brett: Um, like I got into vinegars recently. I was a hot sauce guy and a coffee guy and now I’m apparently a vinegar guy and got all these recommendations for like where to buy Vermont vinegars and Mastodon’s just a font of information for me.

[01:23:26] Jeff: Oh, font. Oh, shit.

[01:23:28] Erin: I don’t get it.

[01:23:30] Jeff: Byes, bell, brings it home, rings

[01:23:32] Christina: I love it. I love it.

[01:23:34] Brett: right, well, Erin, thanks for being

[01:23:36] Jeff: Erin, it was so nice to meet

[01:23:38] Erin: My pleasure. My pleasure.

[01:23:40] Christina: us.

[01:23:41] Brett: You guys get some sleep.

[01:23:43] Jeff: You get some sleep.

[01:23:44] Christina: You all get some sleep, fuckers.

[01:23:46] Brett: me what to do.

[01:23:48] Erin: Bye.