The California Guy is Cold

Welcome to Comfort Zone, a podcast all about pushing your hosts, well, outside of their comfort zone. I'm Christopher Lawley, and each week I am joined by two incredible co-hosts, and, well, doing this show this year has been a highlight of my year. As always, I am joined by Matt Birchler. Matt, how are you doing? I feel so, so lovely right now. I was going to say festive, but now I just feel warm. My heart is warm. And we are also joined by Niléane.

Niléane, how are you doing? I'm doing well. For my part, I'm cold. It's very cold. Yeah, two symbolic degrees right now. Yeah, it's a little chilly here, too. I'm a little, ooh, I had to turn off the heater, so it didn't make extra noise. But yeah, we have completed the... I'm suspect of this. The California guy is cold. I don't believe it. And Chicago doesn't have real winters. What is it, snow there or something? I've got three inches of snow outside, yeah.

I spent 30 minutes this morning shoveling and, oh. Matt, it's 42 degrees Fahrenheit here right now. 42. I'm sorry for your pain. That's not the correct unit. Anyways, we have basically completed a whole year of doing this show together, or half a year, because I guess we started in June. But we've completed the first year of the show, and I just wanted to say I've really enjoyed doing it with the two of you.

This has been a highlight of my year. I was thinking back yesterday, actually, about what my big highlights of the year were, and this is definitely at the top of that. I would say moving in with my girlfriend, going to New York for the iPad Pro event. And this is probably the big three. I would agree. Same here. It's been a highlight of every week. And it's nice to have some kind of routine in my life. Because everything's so chaotic.

My schedule's all over the place all the time. And yeah, you're always in this very chat room every week at the same time for some reason. yeah it's like we schedule it but speaking of routines we're going to break routine this is the last episode of the year we are not going to be recording next week which means we won't have an episode the first week of the year I know that sounds very confusing we record these a little bit ahead of schedule because I'm busy, Matt's busy

Niléane's busy and it just helps with the whole post processing editing process and all that stuff So there will not be an episode the first week of January. We're going to take that week off. You know, it's just kind of nice when you have creative projects and stuff to be able to take a little bit of a break, reset, and then you can come back and, you know, have some fun with it. Yeah. We can't all be ATP, where I think they have like 11 years in a row without missing a single week, which is insane. That's wild. They bank episodes.

They've never had guests. Like, it's always the three of them. It's never the two of them. Like, yeah. Very impressive. But we're not that. We don't want to be that. No, I can't be that. I mean, for them, I think that's mostly their full-time job, other than Marco having overcast and stuff like that. That's probably their primary source of income. So I get that. For sure. But yeah, that is a lot. Yeah, even my normal job, I don't work every week. Are you kidding me? I got two weeks off this week. I'm going to take a week off in the summer. I take time off for my real job, too.

another item in our follow-up. Niléane, you have a recommendation for everyone. Just like a quick thing before we get into the main show, right? Yeah. We talked early into the show, one of the first few episodes, the Olympics were going on. Do you remember? In Paris. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So I thought it was a nice way to conclude the year because the artist who composed all of the official music of the Olympics finally released this week the album of the soundtrack of the Olympics.

And this music is amazing, like for real. It's really good. And so, yeah, you will see, you will have a link in the show notes to listen to that album. The album is innovatively called Music from the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games. So that's a very innovative title. But yeah, I just wanted to mention two of my favorite tracks in there. Synchronicity and Higher are the two best ones, in my opinion.

So there you go. Okay, this is great. I didn't even realize they made like dedicated music. Is it like dedicated music for each Olympics or is it just like the Olympics overall? No, yeah. Oftentimes, each edition has their own identity, both visual and in terms of music. And yeah, this composer is called Victor Le Mans, and he composed the entire music soundtrack for the Olympics in Paris this year.

Yeah, this is really cool. Yeah. I definitely heard some of this, although the song I heard the most as an American was the NBC Sports. Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. Many, many times, which is not on here upsettingly, but I can deal with that. I just added this to my cue, but I'm noticing it is not in spatial audio. It's only lossless. Yeah, which is okay. It's great. Yeah. Awesome. Well, that's pretty cool. Well, let's get into the show.

And I'm first up in the document. And I really enjoyed Matt's topic from a couple of weeks ago where he did his Mount Rushmore of apps. So I'm just going to blatantly, completely rip off and steal his topic here and do my own. Because, yeah, but I am going to put an asterisk on mine because I think it would be really obvious for me to say apps like Lightroom and Final Cut. So I'm going to leave those big creative apps out of this. I love Lightroom. I love Final Cut. You can consider those to be on there.

But I figured instead of talking about stuff I've talked about on the show before, we talk about something new or something in a different light. So speaking of something new that we've definitely never talked about, the first one is Obsidian. Never heard of this app. I love Obsidian so much. You know, it's got some issues, especially on the iPad. It's definitely not a native app on the iPad.

There's some quirks to it. It's definitely a lot better than what it used to be. I tried it years and years ago when it was first coming out, and the iPad app was way too rough for me. But now it's pretty usable and stuff like that. Well, it's much more than just usable. It's good, but it's just not great. I do all of my writing in Obsidian. Note-taking, script writing, ideas for Christmas presents, whatever. Everything goes in Obsidian.

I've really been enjoying it. In fact, as of like an hour ago, as we're recording this, but by the time you're hearing about it, it'll be almost a week. I have just put out a new Obsidian video where I kind of dive into how I'm using the new Obsidian Web Clipper app, which is fantastic. No, I love the Web Clipper. it's replaced like raindrop.io for me like i'm storing bookmarks and stuff and links and everything on obsidian now uh in that video i also cover like my launchpad document and daily notes and

stuff like that but what i wanted to talk about with obsidian is a mini mount rushmore and uh basically so you got your mount rushmore but then you have a mini mount rushmore of obsidian plugins so just kind of like running through a few of my favorites here are data view which is what i use my launchpad document to pull notes from other folders and tags and all different stuff there's so much you can do with this so for example i have my launchpad document and in this document i use data view to pull notes from other folders tags so that way i just kind of like have like a home base

in obsidian of all the stuff i'm currently working on uh omni search which is a much more complex search feature but i have friend of the show federico vatici actually recommended a new plugin that's kind of based on ai that's that's it's called copilot plus and it's supposed to be a much more like advanced search feature of obsidian stuff like that so omni search may get replaced here it's it's a great search utility but um i would love i talked a couple weeks ago on an episode that i really wanted something that like indexed all my notes in obsidian and would give me the ability to

be like hey how many times have i referenced this app or when was the last time i talked about this shortcut or something like that and that's kind of looking like what this uh copilot plus should do uh it's currently like an alpha or beta or something like that so you actually have to sign up for it so i i haven't got to play with it just yet but i i have signed up for it uh then there's homepage, which is kind of replaces what happens when like you hit like command T or open up a new document or something or open up a new page in Obsidian where you get this homepage and

you can just like quickly search for something. And what's really cool about this is you can actually enable it to do Omni search searches instead of the built in Obsidian search. So the benefit of that is instead of just searching for titles of documents, you can search for content within it. So I could search for, hey, when was the last time I talked about things? Or not specifically that, but I could search for like things three, and it'll bring up all the documents that have things in it. And then the last plugin, AutoCardLink, which gives you kind of like a rich text preview of a URL.

So like if you paste a link using AutoCardLink, which I have it set up so that if I hit Command-Shift-V, it'll paste this. It'll give me a rich link, give you images, titles, kind of a summary and stuff like that. And you can just click on it and go to Safari. So yeah, that's kind of my mini Mount Rushmore plugins. You know, if I wanted to put you guys on the spot, do you have like a plugin or two of Obsidian that you just absolutely can't live without? Yes, although your list really makes me feel like I'm such a casual Obsidian user by comparison.

So my must-haves, I'm looking at my Obsidian right now, my absolute must-have is paste URL into selection. Okay, that's a good one. If you have a URL and you have text selected and you hit paste, it'll automatically make it a markdown link instead of pasting over it. I have that one as well. I have that one set up to command control V. So that way, like, I can jump between regular command V to paste, command control V to do that, and command shift V to do autocard link. Nice.

And then the other one, maybe the bigger one, is there's a plugin called Projects that lets you basically build a Kanban board that I use to manage my YouTube channel. So I moved my YouTube channel, like, project management from Notion over to Obsidian this year, and that allowed me to do it. So those are cool. Installing that now. What about you, Nelian? You got any Obsidian plugins you need or you love? Yeah, I don't use it. anything um i yeah there's the paste link thing that matt mentioned on on the podcast once and i installed it uh since it's nice um there's language tool sometimes i use it uh which uh spell yeah the

spell check and all of that it also like gives you some very basic writing tips like when you've got a sentence that's too long, it will highlight it and tell you, hey, maybe you should shorten that sentence. Yeah, things like that. I don't use anything else. My Obsidian setup is so basic. It's the default theme. I have tried so many themes, including some that Matt recommended. I always go back to the default one.

Even the accent color, I always go back to the default purple. I'm such a basic B. So, yeah. I'm surprised you haven't found like an orange theme or something you really like. That actually is a little surprising to me. Cat Puccine has an official theme. I've tried some of the Cat Puccine. I do use Cat Puccine for VS Code. It's really nice. But in Obsidian, I don't know. I like it, the default. Also, I have this thing where I don't like when an app's theme doesn't match the icon in the dock.

So if the accent color in Obsidian is not purple, but the gem in the icon, the Obsidian logo in the icon in the dock is still purple, I hate it. I agree with this 100%. It's very hard for me. I can understand that. That's never been something that bothered me. But it's funny you guys talk about themes. So I use the border theme, but I've heavily customized it to match the drafts theme that I have, which was Dark Knight, which, by the way, is still the number one drafts theme on the drafts directory and stuff like that.

But the funny thing about that is it's actually a ripoff of Matt's light mode drafts theme, which I took his light mode drafts theme and basically made a dark mode version of that because I liked it. But it was, you know, white with red accents and stuff like that, if I remember correctly. And I was like, well, I want gray with blue accents. So I took his and I kind of ripped off him. Shame. Yep. And then I talked about it in a video that got like 2 million views.

So my thumb is definitely on this scale when it comes to the drafts directory. In fact, there was an issue with my theme because something got updated in drafts. And there was an issue with it. And I had accidentally deleted the original one that got uploaded to drafts. So I couldn't just fix it and then replace it. so what i had to do was uh greg pierce reached out to me i fixed it sent him a link to it and then he went on the back end and swapped it out so i would still be the number one theme

oh my god come on yeah i'm looking at it i'm looking at we'll put a link in the show notes but yeah your theme is called dark night it's the number one theme on the drafts directory i mine is called warm and bright it's number three and i also have a dark version of mine that's number four So we occupy three of the top four spots, which is actually very, very cool. But yeah, number one is you. I just, I just remembered I have one thing that I use that works really well with Obsidian, which is Clack.

It's a nod. No, no. Literally. I will add sounds. Ladies and gentlemen, in our show document, under my topic, it is in all capital letters no CLAC no CLAC I would not enjoy Obsidian half as much if I didn't have CLAC are you genuinely using CLAC still? it's the best it is very satisfying I love it Matt we need to reach out to some of our mechanical keyboard

contacts and get nearly on a good mechanical keyboard I don't know. The fact that it's in my headphones is what does it. That's horrible. Man. Just by number of references, we've talked about Clack on this show more than any other piece of software, I think. It's Clack, a large gap, and then Obsidian, and then who knows what else. That's it. Probably Final Cut or something. Oh, geez. That app hurts my soul, but I'm glad it works for you.

I would never take it away from you unless I actually had the opportunity to take it away from you. I'm kidding. Let's go back to Mount Rushmore. I was trying to figure out a way to transition back to it. I have nothing. There's no graceful way. There's no way. Okay, so the next app is an app that I've been doing for media tracking and that is SQL. before my girlfriend and I moved in together if there was a movie I wanted to watch I would just watch it that night

but her taste in movies do not align with my taste in movies in fact she doesn't really even like watching movies she says they're too long but then she'll watch like four episodes of a TV show which is just as long I don't know I really don't know but it has been really important for me to if I see a movie or a show or a game or something that I want to watch or play, to save it someplace. And SQL has been really great for that.

SQL does a great job at having access to a database of where you can just type in the name of a movie, a show, a book, a game, whatever, and it'll come up. So I've been using it to track all the movies I want to watch, TV shows I want to watch, shows that I am currently watching and episodes are coming out and things like that. Because another thing I used to do when I lived on my own is the Up Next Q in the TV app, I thought was the greatest thing ever. And I never understood why everyone wasn't talking about it. And like, this is fantastic, except for Netflix.

But whatever, like Netflix is going to be Netflix. But then I moved in with my girlfriend. And also her mom comes and stays with us a couple times a week. So that up next queue is just obliterated with stuff that I would never watch in my whole life. So sequel has been just absolutely really important for me to just keep track of like, hey, movies I'm watching, TV shows I'm watching, things like that.

But I've also been using it as a way to track games that I'm playing and have played. So I have a whole, what I love about SQL is like in the game section, there's three different categories, essentially. There's your wishlist, so like stuff you want to play. Then there's the thing you're currently playing, and it can be multiple games. Like I have multiple games in what I'm currently playing. And then your completed games, and it can be like games you actually finished, abandoned, whatever. And then you can rate them in there.

And then what I love about SQL is you can create your own custom directories. So, for example, I have, like, my favorite games of all time list. So, like, some of my favorite games, like, Mass Effect, Knights of the Old Republic, Skyrim, stuff like that, are going to my, okay, these are my favorite games of all time, original Dragon Age game. So, like, I'm just keeping an ongoing list of, like, my favorite games of all time, and I've kind of been going back and forth and replaying them lately.

So that's been fun. But I will also say SQL added an AI feature this year, and I think it might actually be the best AI feature I've seen any app ever get. So if you, say, pull up a website that's like, hey, here's our top 10 games of 2024, you can go into the share sheet and select SQL, And what it'll do is it'll go through and pull out all those games in that list for you. And then add them right to the directory of like the games you want to play and stuff like that.

It is absolutely killer. And like just this time of year, there's so many lists of like, hey, these are the games I played or these are the games, my favorite games of the year. Matt, you even did one of those. Like, I absolutely love that feature. So I'm curious, do you guys use like an entertainment tracker, game tracker, anything like that? I want to know what Neil Leon says. Can I just guess what Neil Leon is going to say? Yeah. No. What do you mean no?

Oh, that you don't do it. Oh, okay. Interesting. I use two apps. Oh, I was wrong. Shame on me. To track movies that I watch and I want to watch, I use Letterboxd on the iPhone. For TV shows, I use TV Forecast. Nice. I use Letterboxd for movies I've watched and kind of rated and to see people that I enjoy, which I follow both of you on there,

like what movies you guys watch and stuff like that so I can get recommendations and stuff like that. Love Letterboxd. TV Forecast. Love this app. I just didn't want multiple media tracking apps, but it has my favorite media tracking widget where it will show not only the next TV show that's going to be released, but the next episode, which a lot of media tracking apps seem to not care about. Like, hey, yes, this show is currently airing and the next episode is going to come out on Tuesday or whatever. Yeah. I love that TV forecast in the main view of the app.

It shows you upcoming episodes and it will also show you when some shows are coming back. Yes. If they're on hiatus or in between seasons. And you can see, hey, Severance is coming in 60 days or something. And that's really nice. Yeah. That is really nice. Yeah, I love those apps. Matt, what about you? I use Letterboxd as the main one I use because I mostly care about movies and create a watch list for that. And then I use an app on my iPhone called Up Ahead to track like TV shows and games and stuff that are coming out at a certain point that I want to watch.

and that's just a countdown app basically where you give it a thing a date and it shows you how many days until that thing so that's all i do i just don't follow i just i don't watch that much tv um so just having kind of a centralized place that just has the next thing i'm interested in coming out is uh good enough for me yeah no that's awesome i love it uh so the next app on my Mount Rushmore is probably one of just like an all-timer. It's Overcast. I've tried a lot of podcast apps.

Overcast got a big update this year, and I wasn't the biggest fan of it when it first came out, but it has since grown on me quite a bit. And Marco's done a great job at like updating it to fix a lot of the... That helped it grow, yes. Yeah, like he's done a lot to make it a smoother transition and make it a much better app and stuff like that. He worked his butt off to do that. So it was one of those things where it's like, okay, I was kind of looking for another podcast app, and then he just kept turning out updates.

And I was like, okay, now this is clicking with me, and I'm liking it a bit more. But Overcast is just, it was one of the very first apps I ever covered on my YouTube channel. I listened to not as many podcasts as I used to when I had a day job and could commit copious amounts of time theft. And also I used to drive around a lot going to different sites. So I would listen to podcasts while I was driving around and stuff like that. But Overcast is one of those apps. Like it has a few core features that like just no other podcast app seems to replicate as well.

Like SmartSpeed and Voice Boost. I know every other podcast app except Apple Podcasts has tried to replicate those features in some way. But it just seems like whatever algorithm or whatever he's doing with that is just better than all the other ones. and like we talked about when overcast got an update it does it has a feature built into it so it has its playlist feature and it does something that i can't seem to get any other podcast app to do and basically what it does is it gives me a whole queue of all the episodes that are you know are unlistened to that new episode comes in and automatically goes into this playlist but with

the playlist you can rank podcasts so that way like new shows i can put up top or shows that i'm really enjoying I can put up top so that way when I go to play a podcast and like say I'm currently listening something and that finishes the next episode I don't have to go in and manage a queue or anything like that like it just takes care of itself automatically for me and I can just keep listening through occasionally yeah an episode will come in and be like oh I really want to listen to this next and I can manually rearrange it but for the most part I just kind of let it do its thing on auto and it just plays oldest to newest and then it uh it'll but it'll rank you know priority

based on certain shows and stuff like that yeah what are you guys uh using for podcast players right now it's overcast it's definitely overcast i've gone through a whole adventure while on the show exploring every single podcast app i feel like i talked about overcast when the update came out and i think my review was it took an app that was very good and made it not good and added a ton of paper cuts um and felt very rushed out to hit a artificial deadline but it has gotten much better since then um a lot of the things i had issues with have been fixed and i do like it more now

than i did before the update so excellent job to marco for getting it into a better place and yeah it's just great it works the best with how i guess i just want to interact with podcasts which is just give me an inbox chronologically um listing all the podcasts have it refresh quickly and reliably so when I know a new show is up, it's in Overcast before most other apps, for me at least. And yeah, it's just a nice app to use. It has clip sharing, which I love. And yeah, it's a very good app.

I highly endorse it. Nice. Nice. Nimi, what about you? I'm still using Apple Podcasts. Oh, okay. Because transcripts. Yeah, those are good. Yeah, I can't go back. Remind me, does Apple Podcasts, Do the transcript, like, do they auto-generate the transcripts? Or is it something that, okay, okay. That's cool. That's nice. They do it server-side. So anything that's, like, in, that they are, that's in their podcast directory will work.

So a private feed does not get transcripts, unfortunately. But, yeah. They do it. They're auto-generated. It's actually one of the great things, if you listen to podcasts with dynamically inserted ads, those aren't part of the audio file that's on Apple's side. So if you're looking at the transcript, you can just tap the next line of text and it skips the entire ad and goes right to where they start talking again. It's wonderful. It is a very subtle but very nice feature. I've been enjoying this and I'm afraid to say it out loud fearing that one day they're going to transcript.

Apple doesn't care about those auto-generated or those auto-inserted ads because they don't make any money from them. I was going to say, if there's one thing Apple doesn't care about is other people making money on apps. You know, maybe people will complain. They don't care about podcasters. Okay, so the last app on my Mount Rushmore of apps. This is going to be a surprise to some people. Reminders. I have been a big, big things user for years.

But Reminders has been getting some killer updates. And I'm going to say something that might be unpopular. Things has not been getting interesting updates for a long while. It gets like maybe one update, one big update a year. And it hasn't been anything special. Now, here's the thing I don't know. Are they working on like Things 4? Nobody knows. Nobody knows. They do not talk about development stuff. I have been fortunate enough to like get some test flight stuff. but like it's usually like a week or two before the actual release they don't talk about things in development nobody knows who works there like i i don't know anyone on the development team anymore

like i don't i have no idea what's going on there uh so that was kind of partially part of the reason why i was like okay maybe it's time to move on from things and i've just been loving reminders The Kanban view, fantastic. Like I've been doing that for all my video projects and sponsorships. Shared lists, incredibly handy. My girlfriend and I, we have a shared grocery list. We have a share home projects list, which is basically my honey-do list, which most of the stuff on there I put myself.

Whatever. I need to get to it eventually. Those features are killer. And then like with iOS 18, the ability to see your reminders in the calendar app and stuff like that. I know that's always been a feature in Fantastic Hill or been a feature in Fantastic Hill for years. But it's nice that it's in the built-in calendar app. Smart lists. I love smart lists. I wish they were a bit more robust. Like one of the things that drives me wild about smart lists is when you go into the properties of something.

Say you're creating a smart list and you want it to include two other lists, like two other static normal lists in there. You can't do that. With smart lists, you can only pick one list and it's either include this or not include this. So like I have this whole system and I'm actually going to be putting out a reminders video here very soon. If it's not out already, we'll be out on the channel really soon. where basically I have to go in and flag a bunch of tasks and stuff like that. So they don't get included in some smart lists and stuff like that. It's, it's kind of a nightmare. They could easily

just make that smart list system a little bit more robust, but, uh, for the most part, I love it. I also use the app remind me faster to get, um, task into reminders quicker because yes, reminders technically has natural language support but it's horrible like i still get the bug sometimes where like it gets the time wrong where like be like hey remind me about this at 2 p.m and it'll be like okay i'll remind you about this at 8 a.m or something like that like i will still get that bug pop pop up from time to time so remind me faster is a much nicer way plus you can put it

in control center or has a lock screen button or whatever uh and then reminders also has really robust uh shortcut support like the their shortcut actions are fantastic okay this remind me faster is interesting to me because every time i know it yeah every time i've tried to use reminders in the past i want to scream when i create a task so many taps to do anything there's no keyboard shortcuts the natural language stuff does not work um and so yeah uh Although it does annoy me, I'd have to use two apps to do everything.

Yeah, it is a little annoying. But if you set it up in control center or on the lock screen or with the action button or something like that, it's not too bad because if you think about it, how I handle most of my task management is if I'm creating a task, I typically just dump it into the inbox. I'll just be like, oh, I need to do the dishes or something like that. I'll just dump it into the inbox. and then a couple times a day I go through and I organize it, put due dates or put it in the proper list or something like that.

Nice. Well, this is a surprise. Oh, tip about remind me faster. Swipe above the keyboard and you can change the list. So like just above the keyboard, if you swipe left to right, you can swap through your list in reminders. Gotcha. Nice. All right, I will check this out for sure. It sounds almost as good as stickies. I knew you were going to say that. I almost put stickies in there too, but... But, you know, what I didn't want is for you to realize you have a task management system now.

No, I don't. Instead of remind me faster, here's a tip. Just use calendar to schedule reminders. Works really well. You can? You can do that? You can create reminders in calendar? It's on the Mac. Just like you would create an event by dragging on a day, on a time slot in the day, you can do that and just click Reminder and create a reminder. You can schedule a reminder. Oh, my gosh. I have literally never seen this on the iPad.

If you hit the plus button to create reminders, at the very top, there are two tabs. There's Event and Reminder. I have, honest to God, never seen that Reminders tab before. I did not realize you could do that. This actually looks like a much better way to create reminders. Yeah, this is nice. I can't believe I've never seen that. I now have to go back and reinsert something into my reminders video. Thank you, Neil Leon. I appreciate that. Yeah, I need to add that.

That's pretty cool. Any comments, questions on my Mount Rushmore of apps? No, I think it's a good list. again a little more interesting since you omitted the two obvious ones yeah i i'm gonna do i i wrote out and i realized i i wrote out actually a second mount rushmore for this episode but i realized it would take up way too much time like a mount rushmore of creative apps but again i wasn't gonna include final cut or lightroom but i think i'll save that for a future episode because there's

some interesting stuff in there if you do like video audio photo related stuff nice very fun all Matt, what do you got for us this week? Today, I need to get the help of you guys and the audience as well. And help me understand Discord. I'm too old. You're going to have to ask Neil for this one. I know. This is one of those things I feel like we were just a little bit too old for to get.

Go ahead. Hit me. Hit me. Okay. So I, for many years, have hated Discord. Not just the app, but what it stands for. And what it stood for to me was hiding documentation off the web, forcing you to join a Discord to ask questions, to find out how to install something. It really drove me crazy. so like i would find a new app and they'd be like download the app and then now follow us on social and join our server and i'm like no i'm on numerous patreons where i get like uh exclusive podcasts

it also gives me access to their patreon or to their uh discord no i will not join your discord so i agree i have been for many years in two discords one with a couple friends and this year into one for mac stories but not the mac stories like uh uh not the club but the not the club stories an internal one yeah we have a team one yeah yeah um i really only join it if

i absolutely have to but i installed the web app um for last week's challenge and and then a day or two later I was bored and I was like I don't have any Mastodon post to read I my RSS reader is empty where I just want to like read something random for a few minutes and you ran out of content I ran out of internet yeah I reached the end of the internet and I needed more and so I I was like you know what self let's try to get over this and let's join some discords so I joined some discords and I don't know what I'm doing.

I really find it very, very frustrating. And let me tell you why. So here's, I understand the general gist of Discord. I understand it's like a chat thing, but like a group, it's a group chat thing with a bunch of channels similar to Slack, which I'm very familiar with for work. Here are my problems. Why, when I join a server, do I also join every single channel that they've decided is important which in some servers is like 50 channels and i'm getting

notifications for some of them i'm getting that they're lighting up in the sidebar even though i have no idea what they are or that i would ever ever care about them why why do i as the user not have control over my sidebar or my the channels i'm in in a server am i is this possible can i like remove things and not see them or is it the admin who can do that you're putting me in a hard spot because i hate discord like i use it all the time and i hate it so much for so many reasons including this including the uh the way that you handle that the app handles notifications

and yeah when you join a server you opted in into notifications it's crazy you have no idea what and So what I do, here's my advice. What I do when I join a new server, I just mute everything. I don't have notifications enabled for almost anything in Discord. I leave it on like only when people mention me or very specific channels for work.

Like right now I'm working on something and it all happens in a specific channel. I will enable notifications for all messages in that channel specifically. Like I walk my way back instead of like letting Discord opt me into everything. But yeah, I hate it. It's the worst. Okay. So that's not me being crazy. That's just how it works. It's terrible. I do kind of a similar thing. I'm in a few different Discords, but really the only two I pay attention to are the MacStories team one and the club backstories one uh all the other ones i'm a part of because of guilt

but i have them completely muted unless somebody like specifically mentions me then i'll get a notification but uh yeah no i i don't check the other ones and like i don't even know what like the protocol is for like if i were to leave a discord server doesn't it kind of announce to the whole server that this person left? Oh, it doesn't? No, it doesn't. Maybe like the admins will see it somewhere if they have it enabled in like a monitoring channel or something like that.

But everyone else will not know unless they're looking for you and they will notice that you're not there anymore. Okay. Okay. Another gripe. Are threads? Are threads intentionally hard to use? Yes, I swear they are. Yes. This is worse than iMessage. It is worse than iMessage. Because there's no way, as far as I can tell, to just see the thread.

You have to see this is a reply to this comment. So I click that one and it scrolls up a little bit. Oh, that's a reply to a different one. So I click it, it scrolls up again. It's insane. Oh, we're not talking about the same thing. Or maybe the replies. You're talking about replies. I guess so, yes. Because there are threads. Like you can create underneath every message in a channel. You can create a sub-channel, which is a thread. What? Oh, no. Slack has this.

It's not a sub-channel. Okay. Yeah, Slack has it and Slack does it better, I think. I agree. It does it better. So in Discord, I use this in our work Discord server. Yeah, we have a policy like this because otherwise things get out of hand. In most channels, we have a policy where we systematically create threads to talk about specific things so that a channel doesn't get overrun with intertwining topics.

So when you use them systematically like this, I think it works really well. Okay. Because then you can click the thread icon in the channel and see a list of all the threads in that channel. And it's pretty easy to manage. Okay. That's good. But as soon as people use them sporadically and like only some of the time, it's terrible. Yeah. So I'll get into like what servers I joined in a sec. But like I'm going through some of these there's like these are these are servers with like 10 like a 10 000 plus members like these are big

servers i have not seen a single thread no one is doing threads everyone is doing replies um yeah so but yeah like this this gets to my other thing which is like especially in these big servers which are popular and you would think should be a reasonable experience i feel like i'm just jumping into a live like when people make these websites of like here's like the live feed of every post going to mastodon or blue sky or whatever and it's just like this like wall of like randomness that you can barely keep up with that's what i feel like joining a popular discord is is

i'm just walking into like a live feed of every conversation happening all intertwined that i can't follow and i'm just like i don't know what i'm supposed to do here um and if there's been more than 25 posts it just shows you the last 25 and you can keep scrolling up to find where it starts if you want but like it's so hard and i'm really struggling with like knowing what to do in these small chats it works great it works fine i totally totally dig it um but in these big servers especially

I just feel like I don't know how anything's working. Yeah. It's hard to keep up. I agree. I don't, I'm not active in huge Discord servers. I think like the Club MacStories one is nicely sized. Yes. I think like it's not like there's only 10 people. There's a bunch more people than that. It's like it's active every day. There's new stuff to read.

but it's never overwhelming. Like you can easily catch up on everything every day. It's active but manageable. Yeah. And like it's a tight community so you always see the same people so you can start to learn things about people and what they like and get to know each other like in a very superficial way maybe but then I think it makes for a good experience when you're in the server that's not too big like this one.

And I would say also it's very respectful. Everyone's very respectful of each other. The only big Discord server I ever joined was when Pokemon Scarlet and Violet was brand new. And I was trying to complete the Pokedex and I was playing Violet, so I needed the Pokemon from Scarlet. and there was a discord server set up to like help people connect with other people to trade and stuff like that and I joined that, traded the Pokemon I didn't leave it right away and I poked back in it one day and they were just having like an all-out brawl

I don't even remember what but like it was like, okay, I'm out of here like I don't want to be a part of this It comes back to the fact that any online space that's not well moderated is going to be a nightmare. And I think that's maybe the big difference between the Clubmasteries Discord and other similar-sized Discord servers. Like Clubmasteries, there's a very specific set of rules and there's a way people behave and talk to each other.

It's very respectful. And so it never goes out of hand because everybody knows what to expect and how to behave. Whereas there are bigger servers on which it's pretty much free for all and can do whatever. And if you're not in that social circle, however immense it is, you're going to feel left out, if not worse. Yeah.

So do you want me to list the channels that I've joined or the servers I've joined? Because I'm very excited about some of these. Yeah. So the first one I joined was the Club Mac Stories one. I had to. I sometimes felt a little bad because, like, sometimes there'd be questions from people about the podcast and I wasn't in it. And so I had no idea. You are. I can see you in the list. I'm in it now. I'm in it now. Incredible. So I joined the Club Mac Stories one. That's fun. I also joined the Zen browser server because that seems to be where they're doing announcements and development in public.

so that's that's very you very me yes there's 10 000 people in that one so that one's pretty busy um i'm in another one for a browser called surf that only has 500 members so far so this one's quieter um i'm in one for pusmo another thing i reference as often as possible uh but this people like sharing pictures of the puzzles they do every day but this one has the same issue of they have like 40 channels and it's just too much i can't keep up with it yeah yeah and the final one is harbormaster 64 which is are the people who do the uh they did the ocarina of time decompilation

and pc port and they are currently working on a starfox 64 pc port and this is literally there's 200,000 members in this community this one's enormous but how is that even manageable it's not but this is the only place you can go to download what they create and to find instructions this is one of those classic ones of like so I lied earlier I was actively in two discords but I was in this one but I had everything muted so I literally never went to it except when there was a release

I would go to the releases channel but uh yeah so those are the ones i've joined i'd like to be in more i'd like to be in interesting ones because like i i do like the idea of chatting about things i'm interested in i just i've been avoiding them for so long i i'm struggling to like think of good ones to join okay i have one pet peeve that's about Discord. I hate that they have popularized a very wrong definition of what's a server.

And especially now, like, there's the Fediverse and Blue Sky is trying, barely trying to decentralize itself. Like, Discord, they're just lying. I mean, in the... like these are called servers. They're all on the same server. They're all on Discord, like maybe a set of, I don't know, six servers across data centers or whatever, but they're all Discords and they're not separate servers.

And I know where it comes from because before Discord, something popular was TeamSpeak. And when you joined the TeamSpeak server, you were actually joining a TeamSpeak server which was hosted on a specific server. You had to enter the domain of that server to join. So that's the way it comes from. They just picked up that branding, that way of naming things. Yeah, and it's a bad people of mine. I hate it. Because of this, people don't know what server means anymore.

Yeah, this is fair. It is one enormous server, it must be. Yeah. Okay. Well, my final statement on the matter is I will try to keep using Discord. I'm going to try to find some more good servers that aren't servers to follow. But my final statement is that I grew up in the web forum era where you'd go to GameFAQs or other ones I can't think of.

Mostly GameFAQs when I was a kid. And I think forums are better in basically every way. It constrains the conversations to this is a conversation about this. Here's a whole separate one. You can browse the conversations and click into the ones you want. I really like that. And I also love that they were on the web, so they would show up in search results when you're Googling around for, how do I do this? And it would just be in there. It would just show up. It wouldn't be in this like, oh, you kind of have to know it's this, and then join the server and then find it in the unholy search of 200,000 people

all chatting in parallel in channels and find the thing, you're never going to find it. So I think forums were awesome, underrated, and we should bring them back. Completely agree. Bazed. We're just a couple of old men that miss our web forums. Oh, really do. You will get used to it. It's fine. No, I think the big thing, and it's what Matt already said, but it's discords are not searchable.

So if I am looking up like how to do something in this Obsidian plugin, say like data view or something like that, and people are talking about it in a discord, that is not searchable. That is not that. You're siloing off information that's useful to the world. Yep. And that like that in a forum or a blog post or something would be way more useful than a message in discord. But yeah, I thought this was a really good comfort zone topic because it is me stepping out of my comfort zone.

And while I am frustrated, I am finding some light. And so I'm doing my best. I hope you will be staying on the club discord. I will stay on the club discord. Honestly, it felt rude not to be there in the first place, but I had my principles. And not to be a plug for the club MacStories, Federico, send us our $5. The nice thing is like the topics are all over the place. So it's not just like, hey, you know, just apps.

Like there's a photography channel and stuff like that. So like, and then like if there's something you don't particularly interested in, you can just mute that one channel, which I do like that feature. Because like there'll be things that's like, okay, this isn't applicable to me. Glad it's there for the people that want it, but it's not for me. So let me just mute this thing. I'm sure your dog will do well in the pets channel. There's a pet channel. Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, that's the best channel. If I'm distracted in the next few minutes, that's where I am. Okay. All right. Well, we'll move on then.

Let's get to the challenge. Challenge, challenge, challenge. Niléane, it was your challenge. And this was, what did you have us do? Yeah. So I'm pretty proud because this is our first collective challenge. If I'm not mistaken. My challenge was let's use WhatsApp for a week just for a group chat. Don't try to migrate your friends to WhatsApp, although you can if you want.

But yeah, so we did do that. We used WhatsApp for a few days, for five days specifically. And I want to hear your thoughts. How is it? Yeah, it definitely wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. I thought it would be a lot rougher than what it was. It was definitely, there were definitely times I started typing things out in our iMessage group and I went, oh, wait, we're not using this right now. I had to copy and paste. We did a great job.

We did not break the rules once. Nobody did. I will say, just out of habit, I started typing in the iMessage group, but I caught myself and moved it over. I didn't try and cheat or any of that. The app itself, there's a lot going on in that app. There is a lot happening in that app. But for the most part, if we're just talking about the messaging side of things, it's very similar to iMessage. There's emoji reactions, replies, things like that. Kind of nice. I think the biggest rough spot for me was the fact that there was no iPad app.

And I know they're working on it. We talked about it in the last episode, but the test flight was full. I did try and use the web app and I created, to go back to our previous challenge, I did create a PWA for it. The problem is, is on the iPad, you don't get notifications from those. So you guys would send me a notification. So I would get it on my watch. I couldn't tap on the notification. So I had to, like, get it. I'd see it on my watch. I'd be like, okay, so command space, WhatsApp, open it up, and then go from there and stuff like that. So it was more just like a convenience thing that like, oh, this sucks that this isn't here.

And I can't just like quickly tap on a message and jump into that app. I have to open it up. But like, that wasn't the end of the world. That all being said, I am so excited to go back to our iMessage group. Wait, are we doing that? I am. I could just be in there talking to myself. Yeah, I did not mention this, but like, I mentioned it last time, but I did not mention it today. WhatsApp is like, it's for many people here, it's the default way of contacting someone.

And we should mention with 18.2, you can set it as your default messaging app now, right? Yes, but the app has to be updated with the entitlement. Entitlement. Entitlement, yes. So Meta has to update the app. But I'm sure they will do that at some point. That seems like that's beneficial enough to them that they would actually do that.

But these apps, they only do iOS features if they see how it could be beneficial to them. That seems like a big one. Yeah. Quick sidebar. Could one of you send a message to the chat right now? I'm trying to fix your notification problem, Chris. Chris is on it. Oh, nope. It logged me. The web app logged me out. See, that was the other thing I forgot to mention. Is the web app would log me out occasionally, and I have no idea why. and like you have to use like a qr code to log into it it might be easier for out neely on sent it yeah got it thank you it all logged me out i'm not gonna even bother with this so you can turn on

notifications in the web app i just got the notification for that you just have to go to the settings and go to notifications and turn them on i don't know if i did that let me okay now now okay somebody else talking i will okay i'll see you about this okay so it issue um all right i okay i the things i didn't like first i it has there was a weird bug i experienced on both my phone and the mac app where i would open it and it would scroll slightly up from the most recent message so like there'd be one new message i'd click into it or i'd click into the

notification and it would scroll right above the message i don't know why it happened on multiple devices for me i have this bug on the mac okay i'm it's very strange a very minor thing um i found threads also i guess is the theme of today threads are a little tricky to follow because i don't i didn't see a way if someone like replies to a message or they're a way to see all of the messages together kind of like iMessage does i mean yeah okay should i reply to every bullet fight the very the very last one and everything else is positive after that um is the uio is just

slightly smaller than um i'm used to an iMessage like all the touch targets are ever so slightly smaller and like the plus button is like closer to the corner of the phone and stuff so um yeah That minorly annoyed me, but I could get used to that. So that's all the negative. I knocked down a tree. Looks like, okay, so Matt, you did solve the notification issue. I just was, I guess I was just too lazy and didn't go into the settings for the web app and turn on notifications. I'm just too used to iOS apps, like, just prompting you and be like, hey, you want to send a notification.

I bet you web apps can't do that because... You're probably right. Actually, I thought that was a feature when Apple updated how PWAs work. I thought that was a new feature now that you could get the iOS. I don't know. I still got the iOS style notification prompt, but I had to go in and manually turn them on. It is nice. There is keyboard shortcuts for the web app. Good on you guys. You get a thumbs up for that one.

Yeah, about threads. I think iMessage is the only messaging app that handles replies in this way. Okay. So it's more like the WhatsApp way is more the norm. Like even in Telegram, Signal, what else is there? Facebook Messenger. You don't have like a continuous thread of all the replies to a message. You just have a quote to go back to the message you're replying to.

Okay, that's fair. But other than that, I did actually like it. It was fast. It was easy to use. Everything just kind of worked reliably. I liked that I was able to use it across my devices. I messaged from Windows, a thing I've never done with iMessage or SMS before. And I think ultimately, I was actually a little frustrated that I couldn't use this as my messaging app. so i could use it for our chat if we kept doing this but i'm never gonna get my family and friends to switch over this is a fool's errand that i've tried many times in the past everybody just uses

iMessage and rcs and sms and yeah but like i if i could get my iMessages and other message other text messages to go through here i would give it a go and see what it was like but yeah kind of bummed that I don't have the ability to do that with iOS. Yeah. I like the iMessage app a little bit better. I like the way it handles replies and stuff a little bit better. My whole life is an iMessage.

It's just one of those things. It's kind of weird how America basically all ended up doing SMS, RCS, or iMessage, and the rest of the world, a good chunk of the rest of the world did WhatsApp. And if I remember right, and correct me if I'm wrong, the big reason why this was the case is carriers outside of the U.S. charged a fortune for text messaging, and you got very few messages, and then WhatsApp came along and was like, hey, this is free text messaging.

Does that sound about right? Am I remembering that correctly? I don't think so. Okay. I think the aspect that mattered most is the fact that here, most people don't have an iPhone. So you can't just use iMessage by default. And you're right that it did play a part at some point. Like SMS were expensive and there was an era where people started to use apps like these to message each other over cellular,

like over data. I don't know. I think it's both. Today, the main thing is that most people don't have an iPhone. People have Android everywhere. And sometimes I'll get an SMS, an iMessage from somebody that I just met. But that's just by chance. It's more the exception than the norm. Did you join the Billie Eilish channel?

I did, but I had no idea what was going on. I stumbled upon this and I was like, hey, that's fun. There are channels. I didn't know either that there were channels in WhatsApp. I knew there were a thing in Telegram. Is this like WhatsApp trying to be like Discord kind of thing? That's kind of what my impression was. A little bit. You know what? WhatsApp is trying to be a bit like Discord because now in WhatsApp you can create communities. That's what they're called. Oh, geez. And what communities are is an aggregation of channels.

So a bit like a Discord server is an aggregation of channels. I am part of some WhatsApp communities as part of work. And it works a bit like in the Discord app. You just tap on the community and there's a bunch of channels. You can join specific channels, mute specific channels, etc. it's a bit of a nightmare. Clearly, it's an afterthought, whereas Discord was built on top of this idea and WhatsApp was not.

Yeah. I wanted to mention as well, I mentioned Telegram. Telegram is also very popular here, at least in France, in specific circles. If you've heard recently, the Telegram CEO was arrested in France. He's never going to France again. I'm very fascinated by the whole vibe around Telegram.

Oh, no, I'm sorry. I was going to say I thought Telegram was for the super encrypted messages, but that's Signal, right? Yeah. Yeah, Signal is also a thing. But yeah, Telegram is... What's funny about Telegram is like the politics circles use it a lot. For example, Emmanuel Macron is reportedly a big fan of Telegram and he stopped using the app as soon as the CEO was arrested.

So yeah, go figure. Yeah. So I wanted to mention Telegram. And one last thing, returning to WhatsApp, as part of the EU regulations, the newest regulations, Meta will have to make their messaging apps interoperable. Interesting. I don't know if you've heard this. I remember seeing something about it, and I was kind of surprised that Apple wasn't thrown in there too, being like iMessage needs to be interoperable with other services.

Yeah, I think here the EU considered Meta to be a gatekeeper as a platform and not iMessage. Interesting. Not Apple's iMessage. So I think it's during 2025, WhatsApp will have to start working with other apps, other messaging apps that use the same protocol, an end-to-end encrypted protocol. I think they chose the protocol that's used by Signal. So starting sometime soon, I don't know when, in WhatsApp, you will be able to message people that are using Signal and other apps.

And we don't know which apps because the idea is that developers can start developing apps that work with this protocol and plug into this network. So it's going to be interesting, I think, an interesting landscape. And I think it also applies to Facebook Messenger and Instagram DMs. Interesting. Yeah. Anyway. Interesting. Well, this was a good challenge. I thoroughly enjoyed this challenge. We had some fun in the WhatsApp group and stuff like that.

It was interesting to try. I feel silly that I didn't even bother to go into settings and look for notifications in the PWA. But, yeah, that's more of a sign of what kind of week I've had. This has been, I'm surprised I have any hair left on my head kind of weak. So, yeah. So, let's vote. Are we going back to iMessage? I vote iMessage. I vote iMessage. Okay. Yes. I have to try. Yes, democracy finally wins, Matt.

I was going to be so mad at you if you voted for Neil deGrasse. I was really in a tough spot there. I didn't want to be the tiebreaker. You were going to be the tiebreaker no matter what. We're just not going to reply as reliably if it's the only chat in that app. Although I guess it's not that far from the same for you. Next time we're switching to Telegram. Oh, no. This is like the next five challenges for me. This week's signal.

That's just like the dead man switch kind of thing where like if I'm going out, I'm taking you all with me. All right. Well, this was a good challenge. you guys ready for what we're going to do in, I guess not next week, but in two weeks, essentially? Or what is due in two weeks? Are you ready for this? Are you sure? No, but go. Yes. This upcoming week or upcoming two weeks, I want you guys to change something about your desk setup. Figured Christmas break, two weeks, you got time. This could be anything management to i got a new monitor computer like like a lot of my challenge pretty wide open uh

you know i give you a lot of room to interpret it in any way you want i i thought this might be kind of fun okay this is good i i already know what i'm gonna do and i'm gonna i'm just gonna tell you right now what i'm gonna do no you gotta save it for the show you're i have a light on my desk and it is a curled up thunderbolt cable that goes from my dock to my laptop and I'm going to find a way to hide this godforsaken wire

in the next two weeks and if I don't play this clip back and shame me but that is what I'm going to do and I'm going to find a way to do it way too much work for the edit so probably wouldn't happen but yeah okay I like that I have a pretty I'm going to say I have a pretty big vision for this challenge and leave it at that oh boy sounds like a $4,000 plan yeah this is someone working up an excuse to buy a new iPad yeah you know

it's a very Mark Gurman talked about those folding iPads aren't coming until 2028 well guess what I have a review unit of right now I don't I don't You're going to fold an iPad yourself. Yes, yes. I'm going to fold an iPad. You can't stop me from making my own folding iPad. Folds once. No, what I'll do is I'll get two iPad Pros and those magnets Federico used for his MacPad and, you know, just fold them together.

I'm just kidding. Perfect. That would be wild. All right. Well, that just about does it for this show. Thank you all so much for listening. But before we wrap up, I have a question for you all. And I was kind of curious about this one because I was thinking about my topic and stuff like that. And I want to know what photo editing app you use. Like, what do you use to edit your photos, like Lightroom style or Photoshop style? What do you use? I use Photometer and Pixelmator.

Nice. Nice. Are you worried about those going away now that Apple bought them? Yes. Yes, I am. Yeah. I hope they stick around. I hope they stick around too, but they need to get better. For me, it's Lightroom. I edit my photos in Lightroom. It works well with the workflow that I like to do, and the editing controls just work really well with me. I've never gotten Photomator to kind of be as flexible as I find Lightroom.

So, yeah, I love it. um exactly what matt said i use lightroom adobe's best app on the ipad is lightroom by a mile it is really good i have no idea what the lightroom ipad team is doing versus what the other ipad app teams are doing um it's really it has most of the features the mac version has uh whereas something like photoshop for the ipad has a fraction of the features the mac version has

yep even years and years later uh no idea what's going on there but it's a great app i love editing my photos in there i have uh the way i pay for it i think i get like either 100 gigs or a terabyte of storage i don't remember it's one of those it starts with a one how about that uh and uh it works really well um i thought i could look it up but it didn't it wasn't right there all right yeah maybe it's 10 gigabytes maybe it's just one gigabyte maybe it's one megabyte. Who knows? But that just does it for this week.

Thank you all so much for listening. I hope you all have an excellent New Year, Christmas, holiday, whatever you celebrate. I hope you have an excellent time. Do either of you have something you want to promote or whatever? Yes. F. Macron. For real. I just wanted to say that. And Merry Christmas. That's my Christmas gift. Filthy animals. I've got nothing so you did it for both of us alright cool well everyone have a wonderful wonderful time

we will talk to you all in the new year goodbye Bye.