I Got a Flu From This Keyboard

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. As always, I am joined by a Matt Birchler. Matt, I know the answer to this, but how are you doing, buddy? I'm doing great, at least compared to yesterday. Yesterday, I literally would not have been able to record with you guys, but today I'm good enough and I have some tea with me, which is delightful.

We'll try and take it easy on you. No crazy app that's going to upend your whole windowing on your Mac this week. Oh, that's my favorite thing, though. Oh, okay. All right. We are also joined by Niléane. Niléane, how are you? I'm fine. Hey, have you seen that Matt is truly obsessed? Like he tweets about Aerospace, he blogs about it, he videos about it. He's all about Aerospace. And did you notice this morning he renamed Birch.me to Aerospace.me?

Wow. It's going a bit far, I think. That's some commitment right there. You know, you hate to see a good website die, but it happens. But another great website be born. It'll join the other websites in the great server in the cloud. Yeah, archive in the cloud, something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We have some feedback. Niléane, you mentioned you put it in here. Do you want to run through this stuff so Matt doesn't have to read it?

Because it's kind of the first thing's about him. So I kind of feel bad making him read it. The first one is for Matt. So Sam wrote in, I agree with Matt. So well done already, Matt. I agree with Matt about the AirPods Pro 3. The fit is so much worse. Personally, I'm in between two tip sizes. One is too big and one is too small. They feel like they stick out further and wobble loose much easier while exercising.

The twos stayed perfectly in and I couldn't even tell I was wearing them. Now I'm getting loud whistling noises from the right earpods. It seems the seal isn't great and noise is leaking out and the AirPods whistle. You don't want your AirPods to whistle. Yeah. Usually. This is totally right. They do mention the thing that I neglected to mention, which is that they just stick straight out of your ears.

They look crazy. I hate that look for AirPods. I like when they kind of look like they're just like parallel with your face, like they're just going down. But the new ones, they just stick out. I think you look more silly than you should. It is kind of wild that the whole thing with these AirPods was they've measured tens of thousands of years. And, you know, we've added more tips to the box and stuff like that. But it seems like, and this is all anecdotal because, I mean, it's just our feedback and stuff we've read on the Internet. But it seems like the fit is worse for a lot of people with these than it was compared to the twos, which didn't have the extra tips and didn't measure tens of thousands of years or whatever it was.

Yeah, it is. I mean, there's always a thing with headphones like not fitting in everybody's ears. But I feel like this is the first time with AirPods that there's been like a distinct narrative around them of like, oh, they don't fit as well as the last ones. In a way, yeah, haven't had before. But speaking of AirPods, Matt, have you seen, I mean, maybe you have not because you were sick, but Chris put out a video this week. I did see. Yeah, reviewing his best gadgets of the year. Is that so?

Absolutely, yeah. My favorite tech of the year. Some are, like most of them he talked about on the show. So it was like a great 2025 compilation of the gadgets Chris has brought on the show, including the crazy mouse. At some point, he talks about the AirPods Max and there's just like B-roll of him putting on his AirPods Max with AirPods Pro already in his ears. So I think you've got some explanation to do.

Do you do the dual wielding all the time of the Pros and Max? Look, as I told you on Macedon, this is how you get superior sound quality and superior noise cancelling because you're not only getting the sound of the AirPods Pro, but you're getting the sound of the AirPods Max plus you're getting the noise cancelling of the Pros and the Max. you're doubling everything is what you're getting. It begs the question, Chris, are you wearing AirPods Pro right now as well?

No. So usually what happens when I film B-roll is I throw in my AirPods Pro and I listen to a podcast as I do that. And I got to this clip where I needed to literally just put the AirPods Max on on my head. And I was like, I don't want to stop listening to my podcast. So I just put them on and I was like, eh, nobody will notice. Well, the one person that noticed was Neely on it. it's crazy that no one noticed in the comments yeah i i honestly kind of thought like if there was gonna be like an uproar in the comments of something it would be that but like there really

actually hasn't been a ton of comments on this video in general i think the problem with this video is um i could say because they're not gonna listen the sponsor kind of dragged their feet on this this was supposed to go out on black friday and the sponsor kind of dragged their feet and i I wasn't able to get it out on Black Friday. So it's not in that window of like, hey, give us your best gadgets of the year slot where everyone's watching those videos and stuff. So whatever. It is what it is. Go check it out if you want to see what my favorite gadgets are.

But like Neilion said, most of them were the things I brought to the show. But I have a large amount of viewers that watch my videos but don't listen to the show. And shame on them. They should listen to the show. Yeah. It begs to wonder, like, since the AirPods Pro 3, they stick out so much, according to Matt and others. Like, when you put the AirPods Max on, do they pierce the speakers, like, in the ear cups? No, they were fine. You just dabbed your AirPods Max with the AirPods Pro?

Yeah, I literally just put, I had the AirPods Pro 3 in. I just put the AirPods Max on on top of them, and I recorded for, like, a minute of me just sitting at my computer working. Like, that was the B-roll shot. All right. Yeah. Moving on. Still in the domain of audio, Trashbandas71. Remember him? Them? I believe I established that was his given Christian name on the show, too, by the way. So, we reviewed their desk setup in Cozy Zone.

So, they wrote in a very simple phrase. Very simple. Very straight to the point. They wrote, try the Bose Quiet Comfort Buds Gen 2 Wireless Charging. That's it. That's all the advice. So you should try it, Matt, obviously. Actually, I think this was for you. I think this was, remember last week when you were talking about you were falling asleep with your headphones in, but you didn't like the AirPods because they were sticking out, and you needed something that was flat because you were sleeping on your side?

I think this is for you. Okay, let me Google them then. Yeah, I saw this and I was like in our notes and I was like, oh, I thought this was for you. Let me look at them. What did it look like? Okay. They look huge though. But are they flat? See, I don't know anything about these. $300 for something huge like that in your ears? Ooh, that's more than AirPods Pro. Yeah.

300 pounds. I don't know why I'm saying pounds on this website. Okay. Okay. Well, thank you. Okay. I guess that was for me. I don't think that's a good solution, but thanks anyway. All right. Moving on. I'm doing the show now. Moving on. Somebody in the document spammed the hell out. About a thousand emojis. A thousand party emojis?

What's going on? I'm just assuming it's somebody's birthday and we could just move along. There's not really anything of interest to talk about this week, especially that would concern one or two or three of us. Nothing in the news really happens, so I don't know what this is about. Yeah, no, I'm pranking you. I'm pranking you. I put them emojis in the document. You did it? So when people are listening to this, it's been a week already, But this week, more than a week for you, but for us, it's this week that it was announced that Alan Dye is leaving Apple.

And if you remember right, liquid glass sucks and deserves to die in a grave on fire. The fire has to be on, like the grave has to be on fire. And the fire should be on fire. And the fire should be on fire, exactly. And Wicked Glass should be in that grave. So anyway, it's like the guy has been at Apple for, what is it, a decade?

No, it's been like 20 years. Has it? Yeah, he designed the original box for the iPhone. Like the original box for the iPhone. I guess it's been a decade that is in charge, right? Yeah. So when Johnny Ive left, he got a big promotion. Yeah. But yeah, he's done stuff like he helped with the iPhone X design and all sorts of different things. Yeah. And he spearheaded liquid glass.

So obviously, feel free to like, so I have some party music recommendations for our listeners. Black Eyed Peas, Boom Boom Pow, is a classic. Like, tons of fun. Strip out your clothes and dance into oblivion until you sweat all your water out. That's a great song to start. Feel free to throw some Shakira in there. Like, embody the 2000s. Shakira, yeah, yeah.

Since we're approaching Christmas, maybe finish off with Mary Akari. And maybe like if you want a morn liquid glass, you can do Celine Dion, but not too much. Then straight back from the top, black eyepiece, boom, boom, pow. And you do that on repeat and you will have a great party tonight to celebrate this news. Obviously, I don't adhere to the cult of personality in both ways, like both idealizing one person who's in charge of something at a big company such as Apple.

But also, I like to pinpoint those who are responsible. And he's responsible. He's responsible for so many things gone wrong in terms of UI design. And I think, like, I know that you guys are still on Copium Hardcore 2000 and you think Liquid Glass is fine. It's not fine. Like, I've not been talking about it lately because people are bored.

But it's still not fine. It's still buggy as heck. It's still flashing all over the place when you scroll on web pages. stuff is still unreadable even with the tinted option yeah go ahead Chris since I have installed Tahoe I've come more around to your way of thinking it's fine on iOS and iPadOS it's fine it's not perfect it's not great it's not terrible it's just fine Tahoe is bad Tahoe is dead Tahoe now that I've actually got to use Tahoe, like seriously use Tahoe.

Because I installed it on the MacBook Air and I used it for a little while and I was like, it's fine. But I've used it, now I'm using it on the MacBook Pro and I'm like, oh, this is rough. So, yeah. But Matt, I can't tell. Do you think Neelion's excited by this news? Well, I've done the important work and I've counted the ta-da emoji and there are 2,272 of them. Oh my God. Which I think must be some sort of cryptic message.

That must be an important number. I think it's the layers, the number of refractions you get with liquid glass when you use it. Oh my gosh. It's like the numbers on Lost. It means something, but we're going to take seven seasons in order to figure out what it actually means. Yeah, I'm happy about this, but obviously I'm not hopeful in any way because Apple is still Apple. Tim Cook's still there. There are some good news circulating about his replacement. Yeah, that's what I wanted to bring up.

Yeah, he seems like... So he's been at Apple for... Since I was born, almost. 1999. We're talking about John Ternus, right? No. No? No. Steve LeMay, is that it? Alan Dye's replacement. Oh, Alan Dye's replacement. Okay, okay, okay. So he's a UI designer who's been at Apple for super long. And I don't know, some folks, I follow a bunch of former and current designers at Apple on Mastodon.

Obviously, the current ones, they are doing their job and not saying anything. But the former ones, they seem really happy about the news. So yeah, we'll see. We'll see. Yeah, it sounds like this guy. I don't know Alan Dye's. I don't know Alan Dye. I don't know Alan Dye's replacement. But the general sentiment across the board of people that know both parties, this seems to be like a positive change.

I want to point out someone that I really dislike, who is John Gruber. He wrote something insane today. just want I like I have to acknowledge this because people have been sharing his post he wrote something insane today he wrote that like mumbo jumbo so Alan Dye he left for Meta right and Meta is not a great company and basically his post is to say that not only Alan Dye's work was not good in terms

of spearheading UI design, but also his moral compass is not good because he chose to go to meta. It's essentially what he wrote. I'm paraphrasing. And what are you talking about? He's been working at Apple, who's given a trophy, golden trophy to Donald Trump. Like, what are we, what kind of moral compasses are we comparing here? Like, the bar is so low to the ground that living from meta is not having a moral compass comparing to staying at Tim Cook's Apple.

I mean, in fairness, he didn't say moral compass. It was more of a compass around design, not morals and the way we're talking about. But I understand what you're saying. No, I think he's supposed to. I think you're straw manning a little. anyway all right um so alan die is gone but neilion you have something you wanted to follow up on yes so the saga of storing my music continues um i first i had my music on a nas on a homemade

the NAS. Then I purchased a 2TB SSD that I stuck on the back of my MacBook Air and I was fine. That was fine. And then I was made aware of a tiny new USB-C flash drive that SanDisk released just a few weeks ago. It's called the Sandisk Extreme Fit Pro or something like that.

One terabyte, slower speeds, but just fine for storing files if you're not working off of it. So I bought that. I got it. And so the short story is it's a mixed bag, but at the same time, it's amazing. So why is it amazing? It's amazing because the thing is tiny. It feels incredible that something that looks like a mouse dongle actually has a terabyte inside and all of my files, all of my music inside.

And I can just like close my MacBook, put it in my backpack. I have no worry whatsoever about moving the thing around with this stuck to the USB-C port. It's amazing. And considering in regard to the writings and reading speeds, they honestly are great. Like, writing speed is way lower than the reading speed. So it's 400 megabytes per second for reading and up to 150 for writing.

and just it's just perfectly fine um why is it a mixed bag though and this is a psa for people listening it is a mixed bag because even though all of that even though it's great if you plan to buy this and use it with your macbook air uh the macbook air design has not been updated since the This is mine, right? I've got the M2, but I believe the new ones are still the same design.

Okay. So if you have a MacBook Air and you want to use this with your MacBook Air, beware, it's too wide. It will, like, obscure the USB-C port next to it. But it does so by only, like, about a millimeter, like, less than a millimeter. and I could even plug in the Thunderbolt cable next to it in the second port but they were bent and it felt very

uncomfortable to look at it I'm picking up what you're putting down yes so I was like okay this is extremely disappointing I either return this thing and go back to my SSD stuck on the back of the MacBook or I'll make this work how do I make this work though. I grabbed some sandpaper. Nice, nice. Starting sanding down the plastic shell, the small plastic shell around this dongle size USB USB-C flash drive. As soon

as I started sanding, I stopped because it felt extremely unsafe. Microplastics all over the like I did not feel comfortable uh so I stopped the sanding I grabbed a pair of scissors and I started shaving the plastic oh and you know what it works pretty like it I did the thing I so in the end so so that the residue would be like bigger chunks of plastic and not volatile

that I would inhale, right? Was my thinking. So I did that on both sides, on the left and the right. And I shaved like barely half a millimeter on each side. It did not eat into anything. Like it's just only ate into the plastic. So no insides are exposed. And that's it. It's all it took. Now I've got enough space on both sides, both for the MagSafe port and the second Thunderbolt port.

So it's great. It's great if you want to do that. However, if you don't want to do that, don't buy the thing because otherwise you will lose a USB-C port next to it. And the MacBook Air only has USB-C ports on one side. So this will condemn all of USB-C ports if you don't shave off the plastic like I did. So I did that. I shaved the plastic. It looked horrible. So I wrapped the thing in thin black electrical tape, which looks extremely nice.

Now you can't even tell that I touched the thing. It looks like it was brand new. I did a pretty good job. And that's it. Nice. Yeah. Nice. I like it. I like that you made it work for you. Yeah. And the read and write speeds haven't been an issue as far as playing music? I know, absolutely no issues. Like transferring all of my music took 20 minutes or so. Oh, I have a funny anecdote. So I saw on the earliest impressions of people on Reddit about the thing, people were like, okay, it does go up to 150 megabytes per second

in terms of writing speed. However, it throttles down super quickly for large transfers. The thing heats up. So what I did is, remember this, guys. I took this, the MagSafe fan, from an earlier challenge. If you remember, this thing, it cools down so much. Like, when it's plugged in and you touch this thing, it's ice cold. So I just, like, put it on top of the USB-C flash drive while I was transferring.

It kept it up at 100 megabytes per second during all the transfer time. And so another hack, two hacks in one. Shave off the plastic and use a mic save fan. Absolutely not intended for this to keep it cool for large transfers. Nice. That's perfect. Can I share my controversial opinion that I think I need to work this into something longer? I think all of our computers are better than they need to be.

I think the transfer speed on every single SSD is more than enough. And I think us stressing about 100 versus 800 megabytes a second or whatever the exact numbers are is stupid in 99% of the cases. And I think that while your flash drive is like a tenth the speed of what the internal SSDs are, it doesn't freaking matter for almost anything. So this is the thing I'm thinking about is that like our phones are better than they need to be. Our computers are faster than they need to be. We talk about RAM speed as if it's like the most important thing.

I think the iPhone Air is a good example of, oh, you can make the phone worse and people actually like it just as much. Interesting. So there's something here. There's something here. I agree. I agree. Today is Bandcamp Friday on the day of our recording. Bandcamp Friday, if you don't know, is like Bandcamp is a music store mostly for indie artists. And on Bandcamp Friday, they do that every so often. All of the share, all of a Bandcamp's share goes to the artists.

And they're labeled directly. So on Bandcamp Friday, Bandcamp takes nothing. It all goes to the artists. So it's a common thing that people who use Bandcamp, they wait until Bandcamp Friday happens and they purchase all of their stuff. So anyway, all of that to say, I purchased a handful of albums today on Bandcamp. And yeah, I just dropped them into Swinzian, which automatically copies them into the library on the USB-C flash drive. And yeah, just in a blink, all was there.

So the transfer was fast. Nice. That's awesome. Well, we should probably get into the main show, considering we're 25 minutes in. Yes. Have you heard about Alan Dye, by the way? Okay. So, Neil, you have the first topic in the show notes. Unless you'd like me to go first. It's up to you. You've been talking a lot. Yeah, we can go first so we can break. Okay. All right. All right. So, I have a few things I actually wanted to bring to the show, but there are a few small things. It's kind of an all the small things topic for me.

And I wanted to talk about the tech experiments that I've started doing that are kind of going into the new year. I have a few things that I am doing that are kind of leading up to what I want my 2026 year to be. So the very first thing that I'm doing, and I'll break these down, and then at the end, you'll kind of see how it's all coming together. But the very first thing I am doing is I am migrating my website from blot.im to ghost. And yes, I love Blot.im.

It's very simple. It's very straightforward. So that's a CMS. Yes. So Blot.im is like, it's kind of a web service. It's kind of like a Squarespace or a ghost, but it's very, very simple. It's very simple. It's just all text files and stuff like that. It's super easy to work with, but it's very limited in what you can do. And there I have some plans and I don't want to announce anything now because I tend to do that where I announce stuff super early. And then a bunch of people are like, you said this thing was coming and it hasn't come.

Like, I've learned my lesson. So I have things coming and that I want to do that I can't do with Blot.im, but I can do with Ghost. So I have been working on rebuilding my website. It's just something I've been spending my nights doing. Like after I, you know, when Danielle comes home from work and after we eat dinner, we'll usually watch TV or something. And we've been watching Mad Men lately. And I'll just sit there on my iPad. I've built the whole website so far on my iPad.

Ghost, like if you go through Ghost's website and all that stuff, it works great on the iPad. Like it is fantastic. So I've been building it all. I've got the theme. I've got most of the pages set up. Right now I'm working on an automation to automatically, like, when I post a new video or when a new episode of Comfort Zone gets posted, I'm working on it with Zapier right now to try and get, like, automation set up on the back end so that automatically comes over. And it's been great. Like, Ghost has been fantastic.

I'm excited to probably do a bit more writing than I've done in the past. Like I've had ideas for things that I'm like, this doesn't quite make sense as a video, but I would like to put it out there someplace and a blog post would be perfect for that. So Ghost is the first thing I am doing, and I'm kind of hoping to have that launched by the new year. Nice. And you've got Matt to explain all of the depths of Ghost. I've been doing good so far that I haven't needed to call up Matt.

But I have had him, like, just right there. Like, I'm like, I know he's there if I need him. And slide over. And slide over. He's right there if I need him. But so far, I've been good. So far. But I still have a little bit of ways to go. I basically, I made a checklist and to-do list of all the things I want to do. And I've just been working my way through that checklist. And just, like, okay, here's all the things I want to have. I just got my gear page, like, all set up. So, like, you can go there and see, like, all the stuff that's on my desk or all the stuff that's in my backpack or all the camera gear I use or all the, like, gaming stuff I do and stuff like that.

Like, you can go there and see all that because, like, I kind of have that right now, but it was through, like, this Amazon thing. Like, Amazon tried to make, like, their own, like, shopping network, and they still kind of do it for a while. And they paid people like me to basically live stream on their platform for a while. and it was okay yeah yeah you remember i was doing those amazon live streams for like two months um so they were like they paid people to do that and i was like okay this is cool and like i have like my own like page on amazon with all my stuff but what i don't like about that is it's just amazon and i have a lot of stuff that's not amazon stuff and like you like big camera gear you

shouldn't buy through amazon because you get these weird third-party resellers and that's how you get a box with rocks showing up on your doorstep. Don't buy camera gear from Amazon, people. Yeah, so that's the website. The other thing I want to do, and this is actually something I said I would do going into this year, and that was switch to DaVinci Resolve. I said last year, I got really frustrated with Final Cut Pro for the iPad because of the lack of updates and the lack of the huge missing features were driving me nuts. And I was like, okay, I'm going to try Resolve. And then Apple sent me the

Mac mini review unit. And I was like, well, I don't need to try Resolve. I have full Final Cut now. But I am, I just, I don't want to be on the Mac anymore. And you know, what's on the iPad Resolve. And while it's not technically the full Resolve, it has all the stuff that I need. And I'm like, okay, I could do this. I, I can, I can, I can, I think I could do this. So teaching myself resolve right now i haven't made a full jump but i have like a project in resolve

that i'm trying to like learn how to do things then and my goal in 2026 i had to think about what next year was is to use resolve and it bums me out to say that because i like final cut i like the magic timeline i like the performance you get but the final cut pro for the ipad is going on three years now two or three years something like that that three years i think it's three years uh we'll we'll say that um but if i'm wrong i'm wrong but like like and i've gone over all the like stuff that it's missing and like the fact that like the big stuff that was missing on day

one that i'm like okay final cut really needs to add that is still missing today and i'm just like i i don't i don't know when they're gonna add it um i i got to talk to some people on the final cut pro team at WWDC and they genuinely seem interested in like making all of their stuff better but I haven't seen the results and like we've talked about the background rendering feature for iPadOS that was basically designed for Final Cut is still not in Final Cut I mean what's going on like and they put out an update for iPadOS 26 they added all the menu bar stuff but not back so I don't I

don't know what's going on over there but resolve just got a big update and like performance wise it's supposed to be even better on the ipad now uh and i'm like you can do stuff like stabilization and copy and paste effects and you can even make custom keyboard shortcuts for resolve for the ipad so chris if you were on the mac would you still be looking to make the switch or is it specifically okay. No, if I was still on the Mac, I'd be, I'm happy with Final Cut, but Resolve has like the audio cleanup feature stuff that I really want that, like I use Hush for that on the Mac,

but there's nothing on the iPad like Hush. Well, guess what? Resolve has those audio cleanup features built right into it. So I wouldn't even have to use a separate app, which using the separate app on the Mac, like that's actually not that big of a deal because what I do is I copy those files off the SD card. I run them through the Hush and then I just copy them in my Final Cut project. It's really not that big of a deal. But Resolve has all that stuff built right into it. You may have said this. Are you using the paid version of Resolve? Are you getting all this from just the free version?

I think I paid for Resolve when it came out. I paid for Resolve because it was announced with the M2 iPad Pro because that was the big update I was excited about with the M2 iPad Pro because that was Final Cut for the iPad came out. And I think I bought it then in the hopes of being able to use it, but I was like, I can't wrap my head around this, and I just walked away from it. So I think I paid for it way back then. And the fun thing about Resolve, it's just a one-time payment.

And it's not like Adobe used to be where it was a one-time payment every year, which was like a secret subscription, but it was just a one-time payment, and you get everything. It's like $100, right, Matt? It's like $100, and that's it. Yeah, I'm not sure what it is on the iPad. I know on the Mac, it's like $200 or $300. But yeah, kind of the one-time deal. For some reason, I have $100 in my mind, but I don't remember what I paid for it. $95.

$95, that's... For professional-grade video editing software, that's nothing. I mean, you should have seen the amount of money I've spent on Adobe stuff. Final Cut Pro for the Mac is $300. or $5 a month or $50 a year for the iPad version. So that's really not that bad. Yeah. So you're saying it's once again default of iPadOS. I was actually thinking Alan Dye. Oh, you're right.

So now that he's gone. Now that he's gone, Final Cut Pro for the iPad. Well, I mean, it's just going to be like, what I'm kind of learning is in order for things at Apple is I have to stop using them. So way back when, you know, the iPhone 5S, I think was the generation I skipped and went to Android for, and then we got the 6, we got the big phone screens. When, you know, I had to buy a MacBook Pro because LumaFusion was not great for me, and there was no other video editing software

for the iPad, then we got DaVinci Resolve, and Final Cut for the iPad. Then again, earlier this year, when I was like, man, iPadOS, I just keep running up against all these limitations. I got a Mac, and guess what? iPadOS got good. So what I'm learning here is I have to quit something in order for it to get good. Okay, I need you to do something then. Okay. You're going to switch to the Mac full time. Okay. Then quit it just for me, please. I mean, I kind of did that earlier this year. I've kind of already done that this year. So fully expect the next version of MacOS.

because I didn't fully quit Mac OS by the time WWDC came around. So expect the next version of Mac OS to be perfect. Okay, yeah. So you should be good already. Or it works in reverse for Mac OS. If you quit Mac OS, it gets worse, which is exactly what happened. I fully anticipate a Snow Tahoe in 2026. Snow Tahoe? Frozen Tahoe. Would that just be like the Utah side of Tahoe?

Oh, I don't know. That's for the marketing people. Does Lake Tahoe freeze over winter? Oh, yeah. Yeah, it does. Right? I'm pretty sure it does. I don't know. I don't know. I've never been there. Okay, so the next thing I am doing going into next year. So, okay, so so far we've got moving website to Ghost, then we have switching to Resolve. So after that, the next thing is I am upgrading my camera setup. This is only going to be, so I started off using the iPhone, so I did iPhones every year.

Then I got the Canon EOS R. Then I got the R5, which is what I'm recording with right now, so that's three upgrades. I am, it should be here next week, getting the Canon C50. And that, for those that aren't interested in camera stuff, what is significant about this versus all the other cameras I have used, is this is a cinema camera. meaning it is primarily made for video in mind it can take photos but it is primarily made for video it has all the video menus from canon it has all the video focus features whereas my r5 and the

r before that they were technically photo cameras but they kind of fell into this weird hybrid category of like you can do photos and video and that's what i liked about them is i could have one camera that could take care of everything for me. But I, well, actually, I almost spoiled the ending, but I am getting to a point where I'm like, okay, I need a dedicated cinema camera and I would like a multi-camera setup. So what I want to do is right now, when I film a video, I sit down here, if you're watching the video

or if you've ever seen my videos, you know exactly what I'm talking about. I sit down here and I talk into the camera and then I go back and I record a bunch of B-roll of me touching my iPad and I have this top-down rig that is just out of this shot and I'm touch, touch, touch, touch and then maybe I'll have nice swooping B-roll shots in there and yay, YouTube video. Now I can do multi-cam where I can talk into the camera and interact with my iPad at the same time so I can have a much more casual and free-flowing and less rigid video.

I'll probably still have some of those more rigid videos for things like the iPadOS walkthroughs and stuff like that But now things can be a little bit more. If you go and watch my split view, like the split view is back or whatever the AB testing decided the title should be for this one. I think it's like iPadOS 26 Multitasking Fixed or something like that. If you go back and watch that video, that one was kind of a test for this along with what was the other video called that I just put out where it was like how I'm using my iPad these days.

I'm having trouble remembering the titles of my videos because YouTube now gives YouTubers the ability to A-B test titles and thumbnails. So every single one of my videos has three titles and three thumbnails. So I'm having a hard time remembering which one is actually picked after the A-B test finishes. And don't forget the auto-translated titles. But I turned that off on my videos. All right, you did. Yeah, I turned that off just for you. Like literally you asked me to turn that off and I was like, okay, fine. I asked you on behalf of the world.

Yes. And as a man of the people, I gave it. I gave it. But so this is going to give me the ability to make less rigid videos and a lot more kind of like free-flowing videos, like the last couple that I did that were very iPad-focused, like the split view one and the one where I kind of just walk through my workflow and stuff like that. And those had great reception, and people seemed to really like those style of videos. What this is also going to allow me to do is a bunch of really nerdy camera stuff that if you give me and Matt a chance to nerd out for just a second here, I can shoot OpenGate.

So what this means is, and some people are like, oh, OpenGate isn't that big of a deal. It's actually a huge deal for people like me that are content creators. I can shoot horizontal, normal, horizontal video, the good video, but I can almost shoot vertical video at the same time. So what's cool about this camera is it shoots the horizontal to the CFexpress card and then the vertical video to the SD card. So I can have two separate files and stuff like that. So what OpenGate does is camera sensors are typically like 4x3 or 3x2 aspect ratio.

So they're more squarish. OpenGate allows you to shoot that whole sensor as opposed to just the 16 by 9 aspect ratio of that. It's using up that whole sensor. So you're able to basically get a much squarer image. But then when you import it into your video, you have more to kind of play around with. So you can do more and adjust things and things like that. So you have more real estate. So I can shoot 7K, but output as a 4K video. There's like things like 120 frames per second mode.

so you can get really slow, sweeping shots. That's cool. Technically, my camera can do that now, but it's not great at that. 4K, 60 oversampled, things like that. Whole bunch of things, like XLR top handle built into it. It's really cool. I'm really excited about this. Yeah. I'm very interested in OpenGate. I have no need for this, but I do think it's a little funny. It's basically shooting 4x3. It's basically like a camcorder from the 90s.

Is this not just a high-res? So instead of a 480p image, or not even 480p, I think that was like 360 or something p or something like that, whatever that was, or 380p or something like that, this is 7K. So you're getting 7K, essentially IMAX-ish aspect ratio. It's not an IMAX camera, but IMAX-ish aspect ratio. And yeah, it's square-ish, but it gives you more room to play around and things like that.

But I probably won't shoot that way all the time. What's nice about this camera is you can put it in what's called Super 35 and an oversampled 4K mode. So what this will do is it'll shoot 16x9, but it'll use the full 16x9 aspect ratio of that sensor. So it's like 6K or 5.5K or something like that. And then it pushes that down to a 4K resolution. So it's like a much more detailed, much more higher quality 4K image.

So, yeah, I'm excited about that. And I think with the C50, I need to look into this. I can take the USB cable and plug it right into the side and plug it right into my laptop and get the image to go there. So I wouldn't need to use a capture card for this. So I would get a much better image. And then what I can do is I can load in LUTs, which for those that don't know, that stands for lookup table. But it's basically like a color profile. I can load that into the camera so I can have the same color profile that you see in my videos for comfort zone as well.

Pretty cool. Pretty, pretty cool. So all that to come together and say this for me, 2026 is going to be the year of art. I have not I okay I haven't really talked about this I last couple of years I have felt lost I have not enjoyed making videos I've not really enjoyed the job and that's because I was taking the art out of it I was streamlining

things I was trying to make things like a conveyor belt system where I had a script and I would sit down and talk and then film b-roll and stuff like that and I am making changes so that the art is coming back into my videos and what brought this on is I was like what was so different about my older content versus what I'm putting out now and I went back and watched some of my older videos which I never do and I was like these are good like these are fun and I I don't know I just feel like my videos now haven't been as fun as they should be they feel a lot more

they feel a lot more corporate-y and less fun, less, I don't know, less artistic. And I just haven't been enjoying, like I've missed the art side of that. So I'm putting a few things in place. So like one thing I am not allowing myself to do is to have back-to-back table videos. And what I mean by table videos, videos I sit down literally at this desk, talking to the camera for the whole thing,

say, hey, how's it going on? Thank you so much for watching. Have a great day. Like and subscribe. At this whole table, I cannot have back-to-back table videos anymore. I have to move things around, and I have to, like, if I do a table video, the next video has to be me moving around and doing different things. Now, I can't always guarantee the release schedule is going to be like that, Because sometimes videos get delayed, sometimes sponsors things and stuff like that. But yeah, like things get, so it may not release like that, but ideally the way I make videos will be a table video, a non-table video, so on and so on and so on.

I'm also going to try and not have sponsors in every single video. Because when a sponsor is in a video, it means I need that video to perform so the sponsor's happy and the sponsor comes back so I can keep getting sponsors and then I can keep paying my bills. So what I'm going to try and do is have a couple of videos a month that are just fun videos that are videos for me that may not perform necessarily great, but they're more, I don't even know.

I don't even know the words, but they're just more casual. They're more experimental. They're more let's try something new. It doesn't necessarily need to be an iPad video. It may be a video about, I don't know, 3D printer or maybe a video about retro gaming or something like that. Something that I try that's different, and I'm just not going to put sponsors on those. I'll do the YouTube ad stuff that's built in, but I'm not going to put, oh, this video was sponsored by.

I don't know, comfort zone. You want to inject more form with the function. Yeah, yeah. And I want to have fun with the channel again. I don't feel like the last couple of years I've been having fun with the channel. I felt like it's become a business. And I mean, it is a business. It's how I pay my bills. It's how I pay my mortgage. And that's important just to be able to pay my mortgage. But I also want to be having fun. Because if I just want to pay my mortgage, I'll just go get a regular job. I'll just go get a regular day job because that, that would be a heck of a lot easier.

That would be so much easier and a lot less stressful. Um, because this job is the hardest I've ever worked in my life. And it is the most stress I've ever had in my life. Uh, and yeah, uh, I, I know what people are thinking. Oh, you just make YouTube videos, but I'm, it's not just making YouTube videos. It's also being your, your own accountant. It's also being your own lawyer. It's being your own boss. It's being your own time management. it's being your own like every every aspect in a company i am that so i mean it's it's easy to make youtube videos it's harder once it's like your actual job like a lot of things are fun as a

hobby and easy as a hobby but once they're your job job um if i can make a recommendation yes involves how you handle your microphone on these more casual videos what i would recommend is free yourself up take your microphone with you move around you know So flip a chair around and talk like you're an inspirational high school coach or whatever. See, I don't have to because with the C50, it has a top handle. And with that top handle, what that means is you can slide a shotgun mic into it.

And I have a very nice shotgun mic right here. The Sennheiser MKE600, if anyone is interested. And that can slide right in to the top handle. And there's XLR ports right on the camera that I can plug it right in. I got a one-foot XLR cable so I can plug it right in the mic and then right in the top handle. No need to hold a mic like a monster. I hear you, but I would hear you better with a handheld mic. Or handheld lav, even. That would be the best. Oh, God. I have lav mics.

And guess where they get put? Right here. I also have a recommendation. Okay. Just as serious. Oh, God. No. I'm a serious. Me too. Okay. like how do you feel and maybe that's not your thing but just an idea how do you feel about going outside I'm not opposed to it I have done some videos outside in the past I get very I get very in my head about doing it especially when I'm by myself

if I have somebody with me it makes it a little bit easier but when I'm by myself I feel like I just look stupid doing it um also where i live it's not very interesting to look at uh so i would need to drive up to fresno or something like that uh to do it which isn't the end of the world but um i i know what you mean and it's a different environment what i am going to try and do is maybe film some more different stuff in different places of the house and not just stick to the studio um the studio is

my place. It's my place that I work. It's the obvious place I work. It's the place that's sound-treated in our house. The rest of the house is very echoey, but I also understand this kind of starts to look old after a while. Maybe a backyard? Huh? Our backyard's terrible. Our backyard, we don't ever go back there. We've never done anything with it. We don't have anything back there except a barbecue. you um but i this next year will be a big year for me because this next year i kind of want to start laying the groundwork for getting an office outside of the house oh that's big because it would

give me more space to do different things this is nice thank you yeah i it's it's a little bit of self-reflection it's a little bit of being honest with myself and a little bit of being honest with the viewer and listener and stuff like that. But, you know, I just haven't been happy with my current process. And it's time to mix things up. It was either time to mix things up or quit. And I don't want to quit. I do love what I do. I do really do love it. But the process of doing it has felt very uniformed, conveyor belt-y, not interesting.

And I'm ready to mix things up. So I'm ready to try something different. experiment. Yeah. I don't know about you, but when it comes to creative thinking like that, I get inspired by myself once I try something new, which is stupid and dumb. No, I totally get it. No, I mean, I get myself too, but I mean that it's stupid because you have to do the first step, And that's so hard, especially when you've got an oiled machine.

And like that first step to try something new and then count on that to be your inspiring tool, like to be your own inspiring machine. That's hard. But in my experience, once you start rolling in that way, it gets easier and you get great results. yeah thank you yeah i i agree with you i think a lot of it was i got into a position where i got very comfortable making one style of videos and i got i think i got good at making that style of

videos oh yeah but the problem is is that style of video if that's the only thing you're making that gets boring and i i got into making videos because i'm a creative person and i want to be creative so um i'm gonna be mixing things up and what i just talked about that's how i'm gonna do it one way to get outside is to get a passport and like film something in paris toronto i don't know hey brands if you want to pay for me to go to those places i'm totally down but right now i could not justify that because what i see on a video most videos would not cover the cost of that

Some videos would, but not most. I'll message Emmanuel. Okay. I will let you know. Look, if France wants to pay me in macaroons, I will come to France. That's the only country. I love macaroons so much. I will accept payment in food this one time. Okay. There are some in the bakery just outside my building, by the way. I would get so fat. I would get so unbelievably fat. I would literally every day I would be in there.

All right. All right. Well, that's it for me. Niléane, what do you got for us this week? This week, I brought an app. And to no one's surprise, it's one again, once again, related to audio. You can tell I have an obsession this year. Anyway, so SoundSource, amazing app for the Mac. And disclaimer, Rogamiba has actually sponsored us, right? Oh, yeah. Thanks, Rogamiba.

Yes. They're not sponsoring us today. But, yeah, disclaimer. But it's a great app. I've been using SoundSource for years. It's amazing. It's awesome. So if you're not sure what SoundSource is, it's a little app that lives in the menu bar on your Mac. It lets you think Windows, the volume mixer on Windows. That's the basic functionality that SoundSource brings to the Mac.

So you can adjust the volume for per app, something that insanely Mac OS does not do by default, does not let you do by default. But SoundSource lets you do that. You can adjust the volume by app from the menu bar. It's very, very useful for that. And however, it's not just that. It's a very advanced app, actually. It lets you redirect audio from one app to a specific output device.

Like, if you want to output your Swinzian music player to a home pod, but keep a Google Meet call outputting to your headphones for some reason, at the same time, you can do that with SoundSource. It's pretty cool. Anyway, so I'm bringing SoundSource today because this week they released version 6. A major new version. It's a paid upgrade. You get a pretty substantial discount if you had a SoundSource 5 license.

Or even earlier, like I think if you... Yeah, owners of previous versions of SoundSource can move to version 6 at a great price. So the great price being $25. So I think even if you got 12 sounds to the 4, you're eligible for that discount. Anyway, so this is such a good upgrade. And this is why I wanted to talk about it. It is fully packed with quality of life features.

And I think, Chris, some of them will like lure you back to the Mac. All right. I'm listening. Yeah, I will go in order of my favorite ones. The first one you will probably not care that much. But now SoundSource lets you set a headphone EQ on a per-app basis. So if you want to, SoundSource comes with tons of community-sourced EQs for tons of different pairs of headphones.

I've got one in SoundSource loaded for my DT whatever, whatever, Bayer Dynamic. There's one EQ profile that I really like. I use that. In SoundSource 5, you could load that EQ profile, but globally only. And now you can just, you can tell SoundSource to use that EQ only for like your music player. So with your music player, your headphones will use the EQ profile, but with everything else, they will just use their default signature

and work as usual. This is amazing. So simple, probably not simple to implement behind the scenes, but such a simple thing that is amazing. Okay, now we start to get into the weeds of things that might lure you back, Chris, to the Mac. Okay. You can set, this is huge, you can set a preferred device order, both for inputs and outputs.

Ooh. Let me explain. So you can order, like manually, in the UI. Okay, I want that external DAC to go first, then the Elgato audio interface, second, third, the MacBook Air built-in mic or speakers. And you can check a box and SoundSource will always force that order.

If the first one isn't available, the second one will be made default immediately without having you click through the UI or anything. you can do this for outputs and inputs it's awesome, this is awesome I spend so many time just switching the audio outputs or inputs SoundSource does this automatically when you set this preferred device order, are you tempted Chris? just by this that sounds pretty cool but I'm still good with iPadOS, I can just go on a control center and change the audio output

whatever okay let me try again let me try okay okay okay okay um you can now set a max volume for a specific device let me explain i've got i've got a dark here external that i use i've talked about this i think i find external deck high uh high res anyway whatever uh it's great deck However, it's got way more power than needed for some of my headphones.

It can power like way higher ohms that are in my headphones, which means if I go too loud on the volume slider, it will destroy my ears. And I never do that, obviously. However, macOS will. Sometimes, out of random, macOS will just boost the volume to the max. I put on my headphones. It's probably Allen Dye. It's probably Allen Dye coming into your house and doing that to your Mac.

He's personally turning up the volume on your Mac. I know. Every problem you have with Apple products, it's Allen Dye's fault. That's the era we're in. It's probably right. We're in the Allen Dye era. Are we in the Dye Allen Dye era? well that's harsh I mean I don't mean it as he's dead but I just meant he's gone I mean he probably like cannibalized labor right on my quest I don't know we're just anyway this is amazing so now when that external deck

is plugged in it has a maximum volume that it just not physically but it just cannot go over I've set it to 40%. Now, if I hold down the volume up button on my keyboard, it will never go past 40% and it will never destroy my ears. So this is such a small feature that is great. I used to use something obscure to do that on my Mac that was called Volume Lock.

It's on a GitHub repo. It's weird and ugly and very old. but it did the trick but anyway still not obviously you're not lured with Pythys you don't care I like I like max volume I love blowing out my ears look I I listen to 80s hair metal you know if I can't turn Metallica or ACDC up to 100% that's a problem so I'm good blowing out my ears I already have that hearing

okay now let me try again now it can airplay to multiple devices at once it's very fast very snappy you can group devices together and airplay to a group of devices all at once you can blast audio with just one click to all your HomePods in your house how about this? so something I haven't talked about on the show I've gotten rid of all my HomePods I got really mad at them one day because they like they just stop playing music no matter how you start playing tell them to start playing music or if you start air

playing to them they would just start pausing in the middle and then you would have to undo it and redo it and then go back and go and then like Siri socks and like I was just like these they were causing me more headaches than what they were worth and they weren't worth a whole lot because I sold them and I had two of the first gen, two of the second gen and four of the minis. I had a lot of them and I hated those things like I just got to the point where I was just hate but but what I do have now is Sonos stuff, and Sonos is AirPlay compatible.

Oh, there you go. So this is interesting. We're back. Now, I mostly, like if I'm going to sense music or podcast or something, I would usually do that from my phone. I wouldn't usually do it from my Mac, because if I'm using my Mac, I'm usually in here, but that is an interesting, it would be interesting like when we had people over for Thanksgiving music throughout the house. That would have been interesting. Yeah. Yeah, you could do that with YouTube videos and anyone can come up to the computer.

Everyone can just be forced to watch me all the time. No. Yes. Sure. Yeah, that too. Okay. One more thing. Maybe a couple more. Now you can customize the icons for audio devices. This is really nice because these icons, they show up in the menu bar. This is so simple, but so nice. You can just tell at a glance which output is active right now because the default macOS one does not always do that.

It does just for AirPods and HomePods, but any third party, it just will show the default speaker icon and you can't tell at a glance, is it actually using my DAC right now or the other interface or the build? You can't tell. You have to click and... No. Now with sound source, if you set a custom icon per device, you will immediately know just glancing at your menu bar which one is active. This is so small, so nice. Is it the new menu bar items so that you can group them together if you want? No.

Okay. Oh, because you won't be able to group things? Yeah, you know how in Tahoe, if it's the new menu bar item style, you can build groups and stuff like that? No one wants to do that. Like, it's been, okay, now it's been a couple months since Tahoe. Like, I don't think, like, I think we've overblown this thing, the new controls in the menu bar. I think we don't care. My take is we don't care. Let's not care about this.

Let's not care about the super limited controls that can do this. Like, this new API that developers have to adopt to do this, not worth it. I don't want to group things together if they can't do anything. I was about to say a swear word, but if they can't do S, I don't care. I'd rather have them spam my whole menu bar with, than be grouped together and not be able to do something. Okay. This is my take. Okay.

Okay. And this is great. One last thing. I have talked about a small GitHub utility once more, found on the GitHub that was called AirPods Sanity. Do you remember? That was months ago. That was a long time ago. It sounds familiar. So it's a small utility that I've always used since I've talked about it on the Mac. What it does is it prevents macOS from using your AirPods as a mic input. Because if you let macOS do that, it will greatly degrade the audio quality of your AirPods.

Because if the microphone is in use at the same time of your AirPods, your audio quality is terrible. It also helps you prevent macOS from setting the iPod's microphone as the default, even though you can have a fancy mic in front of you, which macOS does still. You may have a super expensive microphone in front of you and MyQuest will always default to the AirPods microphone even though they sound extremely worse. So AirPods Sanity prevented that and now this is built into SoundSource 6.

You can just force AirPods to always be the output and never, never, never be used as the input. This is really good. i think those are my main like highlights the the the bullet points that stuck out to me on the what's new page that that was that convinced me i need to like i'm yes i'm getting the upgrade this is great i will just nuance a little bit um this is a 6.0.0 so there's no there's not been any patches yet and you can tell the thing is laggy like the new ui in the menu bar is laggy

it crashed it has crashed on me a few times right now there's a bug that just reported to rugamiba this morning um no audio in whatsapp the whatsapp for mac when i do when i tried to calls today i could not hear them people could hear me but i could not hear them and i know this is related to SoundSource because as soon as I quit SoundSource, all it works. All works again. So something is interfering between like something is going wrong between WhatsApp, the app and SoundSource.

So just a couple of words of caution there, but it's Rogamiba. They fixed that stuff pretty quickly. I'm confident it will be fine in a matter of time. But anyway, I think it's a great deal. It's a great app. I love that the way that they've been promoting this upgrade on Mastodon and stuff. They're basically telling people, if you use audio on your Mac, yeah, you need to get this. Like, they're promoting this as, like, very essential audio tool, like audio utility for your Mac, and I agree.

It's kind of sad as well because why are some of these features not included in the OS? Why do we need a third-party app? But hey, at least we do have a third-party app. Nice. That's it. I think it's great. I hope the few bugs that I've had will get fixed, but I think it's great. Nice. I like this. This is pretty cool. I will check this out, but I don't think it'll bring me back to the Mac. but I will check it out.

Okay. Oh, so, sorry, forgot to mention one thing. I'm so sorry. I made the outro and everything. I forgot to say one thing. I also mentioned a few episodes ago a small utility called Yellow Dot. It's a small utility that runs the background and what it does is it camouflages the dot in the corner, in the top right corner on macOS when something is recording. Oh, okay. When your microphone's active or your camera's active or something's recording your screen.

And in the case of SoundSource, since it's always processing your audio, macOS considers that it's capturing your audio all the time. With a purple dot, not a yellow dot as if your microphone's actually, but just with a purple dot. Yellow dot is something, so the app is called Yellow Dot, all in one word, something that I installed earlier, and that used to work really well to camouflage that. Now, no longer works on Mac OS Taho.

So if you use SoundSource with Mac OS Taho, you will have to live with the purple dot next to the clock in the menu bar. This is stupid. Extremely stupid. All entirely Apple's fault. Well, I heard Al and I personally put that yellow dot there. You know what? Yes, let's do it. It's Alan Dye's idea to do this.

And it's so stupid because if you're watching something in full screen, yeah, that purple dot is still there, even in full screen. So if the movie you're watching has black bars on top and bottom, yeah, that black bar will be interrupted by a pesky purple dot. It's so freaking dumb. Obviously, you want me to know that an app is recording my audio, processing my audio, whatever. Just let me touch ID the hell out of it and get rid of it.

Like, let me get rid of it. Yeah. Yeah. And poor Rogamiba because this is one of their flagship software and they have to deal with this. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. I'm done for real. All right. Well, we should probably get to the challenge before Matt passes out. Matt is back. struggling to stay alive. I feel so bad for him. All right, let's get to the challenge. Matt, it was your challenge. What did you have us do? I underestimated how challenging this would be.

I wanted us to try a different keyboard layout for one hour, which it turns out is the perfect, hardest amount of time to try a new keyboard layout. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the idea was, you know, we use our normal keyboard layouts all the time. I did some quick math. I've probably typed like 30 million words or more with, this is very ballpark, but tens of millions of words I've surely written on the QWERTY layout in my life.

And I wanted to try something else. You know, this aerospace thing really opened up a whole can of like, what else is out there in computers? And I can go first. I personally tried the Colmack layout, which is supposedly one of the easier ones to learn if you're used to QWERTY. One of the things they say is like, one of the reasons for that is like, you will use the same hand in all but two of the letters.

and it also keeps your ZXCV all in order so you can copy-paste and those sorts of keyboard shortcuts are all the same so you can keep using those. However, I felt like I was just drunk at the keyboard, unable to write anything. It's not the sickness fault. No, I truly don't think so. This was before I got sick. This was just...

This is why you got sick. Yeah, this actually got me. Yes, I got a flu from trying this keyboard. I went into VIA. I reconfigured my keyboard. I moved the keys around. And I just felt like I didn't know what I was doing. I think it would take days to weeks to get to grips with it. To which I would say, why? To what game? Maybe there's some gain. I looked into some people's tips for how to get going with it, and they seem to indicate that the reason to use it would be

it's more comfortable to type on. I don't know. There's a lot of stuff out there about two letters that are commonly typed together, like EA. If they're on different hands, they're easier to do quickly because you can just, kind of like a drummer, you can go back and forth with your two hands. I don't know. I'm just, after 30 million words with QWERTY, I'm just a QWERTY guy. I don't know why I'd upend my entire life.

And then what am I going to do? What am I going to do on my phone? Can I set my phone to that? I didn't even look into it. Maybe I can. But oh boy. You could probably get a third-party keyboard. But. Yeah. So anyway, I did it. I'm going to be honest. I did it for less than an hour. Because. Oh. I couldn't do anything. So I, yeah, I gave it probably a good 30 to 40 minutes tops and went back and felt so much better immediately.

So that's how it went for me. And I would be, my entire feeling when I was doing this was like, I will be shocked if either Neilian or Chris had a better experience than this. But maybe you did. We'll see. We'll see. I would say my experience was about the same. Just like you, I've been using QWERTY for a very long time. I think in our first computer episodes, I think I talked about how we got our first computer in the family when I was about five years old. So for about 30 years now, I have only ever used QWERTY keyboards.

And so what I did, and when I was listening back to the episode, I made some groans about Dvorak. And I was like, okay, I'll put my money where my mouth is. And I did exactly what Matt did. I went into Via. I took one of my mechanical keyboards, moved the keycaps around, reprogrammed the keys so it was proper Dvorak. And oh boy, the whole time I was typing, I was doing this. I was one finger hunting and pecking.

I could not figure out how to type in Dvorak. And like Matt, I looked up some tips and it was like, just keep using it. You'll get used to it. And I'm like, no. this will not happen so i set a timer i used it for the hour it was the longest it was the longest i had typed for the shortest amount of words i have possibly ever typed um and it was it was hard like if it's one of those things if you're just getting into computers yeah maybe one of these alternate keyboard methods is the way to go but like matt alluded to we live in an age with

smartphones and virtual keyboards and things like that and uh i i'm sure there's third-party dvorak keyboards and stuff like that and maybe colemark keyboards and stuff like that but like it's just not worth it man like i think we've just settled on cordy and cordy's the way to go like could you imagine being like a dvorak user for 30 years and then like being in it or something like that and then having to sit down at somebody else's computer you'd be like what the is this like I can't type on this QWERTY keyboard

like yeah so it's man it was tricky it was very hard and it was funny just watching me do this but yeah I think I did just about as well as Matt did Nuan how'd you do? I'm happy now because I have the more interesting segment in this challenge okay so I opened day one which is my journaling app.

Because in there, I've archived the blog that I used to keep online when I was between 13 and 16. It's down now. Don't bother looking for it. But I've kept all of it. I will read to you now something that I wrote on... What was the date? On March the 10th, 2012, it's a very small blog post.

Okay. The blog post is called Adopting the Beppo Layout. Eight months later. Okay, that's the title. Eight months ago, I decided to radically change my keyboard layout. How crazy was I? You must know that Bepo, so that's B-E-I with an accent P-O, those are the first four letters instead of QWERTY,

is a keyboard layout that was created according to the Dvorak method, right? And that method just thinks about keyboard layout in a way that's more ergonomic and more logic. What's the point? Beppo, I'm still quoting myself, I went from 2012. Beppo is at the same time better adapted to the French language, using its palette of accented letters and special characters that are typical to the French language, and more ergonomic.

Whether you believe me or not, I do a lot less typos now, and I'm more at ease than ever before, thanks to Beppo, compared to Aztea. Aztea, I already talked about, which is like the French equivalent of QWERTY. The blog post keeps going. There's like a H2 title in that blog post. And that H2 title is I'm doing well.

And it says right below, no, I'm not dead. The first three and four weeks were extremely difficult. It was hard to suddenly go back to a crawl speed when typing anything on my keyboard. But today I use no stickers. And why do I say that? Because at the time I used to print stickers and put them on top of my keys to learn the new layout. So now the blog post says now I use no stickers, no special keyboard, but my classic AZT keyboard with all of my 10 fingers.

And in the end, I am able to type blindly on my keyboard with the Bebo layout. And I feel extremely smart. So that's the blog post that I wrote in 2012. And I thought this challenge was a great opportunity to try it again today in 2025. And I did what you did. I tried it for an hour. And it's like, you know how when you learn to ride a bike, you don't touch a bike for 10 years. and then you ride a bike again, and it's just, it's like second nature.

This is what happened to me. I am still able to type blindly on a Beppo keyboard layout, which is insane because I've put a link in the show notes if you want to take a look at that layout. It's a crazy layout. It's got absolutely nothing to do with the regular Aztea keyboard layout. There are four E's on this keyboard. Whoa. Yeah, we have four E's in the French language. That's too many.

You just need the one. Why do you need so many E's? When you're watching Wheel of Fortune and they say, I want to buy a vowel, and you say E, they're going to have to be like, okay, which one do you want? So, yes, there's the E with the right-facing accent, the E with the left-facing accent, the E with like a small hat on top. There's also an E with double points, you know, umlauts, the German would say. It also has special characters with the CEDE, which is the C with a little dinghy below it.

On the paper layout, it's right next to the enter key, the return key on the right, if you want to look at it. It's got the French quotes. Then it's got your euro sign, too, which your euro sign is also basically an E. That's true. And the logic of the BEPA layout is all the vowels on the left side of the keyboard. All of the contents on the right side of the keyboard. And the middle row is meant to be the most used letters of the French language overall.

Just the middle row. But you have like colon, semicolon, and exclamation mark going through the center. Yes, the idea is that those characters are super used in the French language. So they are right in the middle, splitting the vowels and the consonants are sounds. I don't think that's right. That's not how I understand French. That doesn't make any sense. This is crazy. What's funny is that at the time, so by the way, in 2012, I was 13 years old.

So, like, I did not have a ton of friends. And maybe this explained a lot on the person I became. Anyway, at the time in 2012, this was, it's still super niche. This layout is still super niche. It's made and maintained by like a small association of enthusiasts. And at the time, even as a 13 year old, I used to hang out with the people making the layout.

But a lot has happened since because now Beppo is a government-sanctioned keyboard layout that's recommended by a government agency in charge of the French standards. It's still not the default keyboard layout that ships on computers, but now it does ship on some computers. Like it is considered like one valid French keyboard layout as it's as official as can be.

So it's grown a lot since I remember abandoning it exactly for the reasons that you said, Chris, because it became too much for my brain just to switch back and forth. Yeah. As soon as I needed to go on a computer at school, I would not have my Beppo keyboard layout. So, yeah. But I love this challenge. It made me rediscover this thing. And I used that thing for so many years.

If I type Beppo in my day one archive, there's a second entry, which is another archived post. It's from 2015, that one, and it's entitled, does the Beppo keyboard layout still-- is it still worth it? Is that-- is the title of the blog post. That's like a YouTube video right there. Yeah. So seems like by 2015, I was already questioning my choices and whether I still needed to keep going with Beppo.

But to spoil it, like in the end, I'm writing that I will keep using it, but I will just consider my options. And I know the end of the story, which is like about a year later, I abandoned it completely. So yeah, that's it. I think it's fun. I really like this keyboard layout. I love that it's become way bigger now and that it still exists and yeah. Nice. I love it. This was a good challenge, Matt. I think this was an interesting one.

Yeah. All right. What do we have next? Yeah. Niléane, you're up. So the challenge this week for you boys is to use the Bepper layout. I'm just kidding. I'm like, I don't need that many E's. I have to use specifically one E with an accent. It is when I'm talking to Niléane and iOS at least auto-corrects for me. Thank God. Yeah, I've set up iOS to auto-add that accent E for Nelian's name.

Yes. No. So this is a wild challenge, and it's fully related to tech. Okay? Bear with me. Oh, no. Okay. One. Buy one piece of clothes, like clothing. Okay. This is the challenge, boys. Buy clothing? Yeah. is there is there another shoe to drop like i i what what what what's the challenge like i okay i will okay okay uh the idea is like how how do we do that like it's 2025

in the world of ai how do you shop for clothing okay yes okay all right interesting okay that's Okay. Do you know what triggered this? No idea. I think a poll that Matt Birchler of birchtree.me fame posted on. I think it's you, right? You posted. It's about belts. Yes. Yeah. I remember this. Okay.

You posted that, Paul. You were asking, I believe, people, do you have that one belt? What was it again? You were asking people if people only own a single belt that they're wearing every day and they've been wearing for years. Yeah. Do you have an everyday belt? And if you do, how old is it? How long have you been wearing it? Yeah. So I was thinking about that. And my answer to this, by the way, is that I have one single belt, a leather belt, very well, like very high quality belt I've been wearing since I was probably 17 or 18, I don't remember. And I still have that one. And I was suddenly asking myself, hey, what if I need to buy a new belt? And then I started Googling that. How, like, what kind of belt do I need? Like, how can I get a belt that's good and not expensive?

And spoiler alert, it's impossible. Anyway, I'm spoiling the challenge. My assumption is that it's impossible to do some efficient clothing searches online now because the web sucks. But prove me wrong. So that's the challenge. Buy a piece of clothing for next week. Okay. Or this attempt to, because maybe it's truly impossible.

Okay. All right. Maybe it's easier to use Dvorak. Who knows? We'll find out next week. But that brings us to the end of the show. And to wrap up, I have an end of the show question for you guys. What do you want for Christmas? I want, and if any of my family is listening to this, that'd be very convenient. I specifically want one thing. I want the book This Year, which is written by John Darniel, who is the lead singer of The Mountain Goats. It's 365 songs with lyrics and annotations.

And I love The Mountain Goats. So this looks great. Nice. Neil-Leon, what about you? What would you like for Christmas? I'm afraid to say mine because it would mean someone wins a challenge retrospectively. I want the bamboo lab. Yeah. Yeah, that's at the top of my Christmas wish list too. Or the Lego USS Enterprise NCC-1701D, captained by Jean-Luc Picard.

Jean-Luc Picard. Jean-Luc Picard. Yeah. Picard. No, not the. Picard. Picard. Picard. Picard. Picard. If you used the Beppo layout. I am the cutest of Borg. - Resistance is futile. - Picard. - No? - By the way, in France, Picard is like a chain of supermarkets, but they only sell frozen goods, like frozen food, and it's super popular

because you can get really good stuff in there, even though it's all frozen. Specialty is, everything's frozen in there. Anyway, just-- - Interesting. All right, well, we should wrap up here and let Matt go, lie down, because he looks like he's about to keel over. Oh, I forgot to mention, Alan Dye is gone. Have you seen this? It's crazy. Thank you all so much for listening. Have a great day. Listen to Boom Boom Pow by Black and Peace to party tonight.

Yeah, shut it down. Shut it down. Shut it down. Okay, thumbnail time. Thumbnail.