I'm sure they're doing their best

Paul 00:00

Staying warm, Drew?

Drew 00:02

Okay, you know what? We're gonna we're gonna do this out of order. Paul. Okay. Uh my Okay. All right, all right. Okay. I this is this is gonna take I'm I'm here I'm here for you, buddy. We've we've talked about this before, but my my particular type of mental illness has been through the roof. This past week. Okay. Um, I am very, very acutely aware of how much my furnace runs.

Paul 00:36

Okay. It's okay, okay. Is that just something you just need to know? Are you trying to save money or are you just

Drew 00:44

So it's oh God. It's like a combination of things.

Paul 00:48

Okay.

Drew 00:48

I'm a little less concerned about the saving money part. Okay But at the same time, I'm not a fan of wasting money unnecessarily. Does that make sense?

Paul 00:59

Yeah, I get it.

Drew 01:00

Yeah. Like at the end of the day. If my furnace ran on an average two hours less a day, does that really equate massive savings on my heating bill for January? We're talking maybe twenty bucks.

Paul 01:18

Right. Yeah.

Drew 01:20

Right.

Paul 01:21

But it's the principle of it. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Drew 01:25

So we've talked about this before. Like how much should your furnace be running?

Paul 01:30

Now so I just want to go out and say in the record. I don't give a shit. My furnace could run 24 hours a day. As long as my house is warm, I'm good. I'm happy. In fact, I I I I raised the temperature just recently.

Drew 01:44

Well, so here's how now here here's how I know I have a problem, okay? And again, this is like this is Drew's mental illness. I lowered the temperature of our thermostat. Okay. Right? I went from 68 to 65, had absolutely no impact on runtime. Oof. Oof, oof. No impact, right?

Paul 02:03

I I'm pretty sure hold on, let me get my phone. Would you like to take a guess where mine what mine is at

Drew 02:09

We've talked about this before. You're you're like a mid-70s boy. 72 degrees right now. Yeah.

Paul 02:15

Yeah. Yep. Yep.

Drew 02:16

Yep. Now does your it it does that temperature get maintained in your home pretty easily?

Paul 02:21

Yeah, I mean it does okay. I mean I best I could log on to the Eco B website and see how long my furnace has been running. Okay. I just I just I just uh I'm sure it's a lot. Hold on. Yeah, sure. Except O cookies, whatever. I don't care

Drew 02:35

Now your home is much newer than mine. True. And installation technology has come a long way. So I'm willing to bet it doesn't run nearly as long as mine. Okay. Just based on that principle alone.

Paul 02:46

All right. Let's see. System Monitor. Okay, uh so ts that can't be right, hold on. How do I get God damn, I hate this.

Drew 03:00

I know you so much. Literally deja vu right now because you struggled with this last time. Thanks to EcoBee.

Paul 03:05

Yeah, yeah. I just warntime report. Here we go. Okay. December? No. That's all of December. I want, I want, I want yesterday.

Drew 03:15

I would take yesterday.

Paul 03:16

Yeah, but I it won't show me the It gives me like how long it ran independently. It's running a lot, Drew. It's a lot. A lot. It's running a lot. Give me a number. I don't know. I don't have a number. It won't show me. It will show me how what how much it ran for each individual time. But it will not show me.

Drew 03:37

Oh, they want you to do the math.

Paul 03:39

They want me to do the math. Overview.

Drew 03:42

Why why don't you just show me There's on an energy dashboard?

Paul 03:46

Oh god, I hate this website so much. Just show me what the fucking goddamn.

Drew 03:55

Because now you wanna know. Now now you want to know. Now you does his have to know.

Paul 04:00

What nope? Nope. Nope. Okay, let's see. Well, I'm uh running more than uh Yeah. Does it say it on your app? Do you have an app? Let me let me look. Yes, I do have an app, but I'm afraid it's gonna be the exact same thing.

Drew 04:17

I feel like the app is probably for people who aren't like data nerds.

Paul 04:21

Oh, okay. So hold on. It du alright, it does. It does. Let's see if I can go. Well, so far today, it's ran okay, okay. On average it's been running ten point six hours a day. Okay.

Drew 04:36

So to put that in perspective, ours has been hovering anywhere between eleven and a half and twelve and a half hours a day.

Paul 04:43

Oof. Ooh. Now your house is a little bigger than mine, I think. So yeah.

Drew 04:47

I I mean that that's part of it. That's part of it, but still consider the fact that you're running a much like almost 10 degrees warmer than we are. And I couldn't guarantee you that me cranking my temperature wouldn't make it run more because my house is just not retaining heat.

Paul 05:08

Yeah, so the way that it should yesterday it ran almost 10 hours total. All right.

Drew 05:14

All right. So again, I I am a if there's one thing people know about Drew Fergwell is that he is a data-driven individual. He's built his intelligence. entire career on top of it. So so I ask people. I ask people like you. And there are people that follow me on Instagram and there's people that I talk to on Blue Sky and there's people that I talk to at the gym. That have similar size homes built at similar times and we compare notes. And some people are like, yeah, mine runs six and a half hours a day, you know, mine runs ten hours a day. And look, it is cold as shit in Ohio right now. Oh, it is.

Paul 05:49

Yeah, yeah.

Drew 05:50

But but again, where where my anxiety and mental illness go is there's something wrong with my house. Okay. Okay. Now again, there there's there's a culmination of factors here because last winter we had furnace trouble. We had trouble where like the furnace would run. And then it would shut off. It would run and then it would shut off. And it was they call that short cycling. And it was because like our flame sensor was dirty. So, like when it runs and then stops and then immediately starts back up like 15 minutes later, I'm like, is my furnace broken again? It is, it is getting the house to temperature. But my house is not maintaining that temperature long enough.

Paul 06:37

Got it. Yeah.

Drew 06:39

So, of course, when's the best time to call an insulation company? the middle the middle of a fucking cold snow, right? So I'm I'm I'm currently at a place where I know my furnace is working. It is working. I wish it wouldn't run as much. And and to be fair, in the wintertime, or I'm sorry, in the summertime, our air conditioner also runs a lot. Now, there are several parts of my house that are problematic. Okay. The number one offender in my house is our bedroom. So to kind of describe this, we have a first floor master bedroom. My house has three crawl spaces. Wow. Okay. One of those crawl spaces is under our bedroom. So First of all, crawl space crawl spaces get fucking cold. Now it's got earth. Like yeah. Yeah. It's like the earth is like right there. So like Right off to my right hand side is a crawl space access panel that I that I basically built a door over that cold air does seep out of down here in my office. But that entire section of the house where our bedroom is is over a crawl space. Now on paper, everything is kind of how it needs to be. First of all, the crawl the crawl space is encapsulated because of radar mitigation. Second of all, there is fiberglass insulation running the entire uh the entire like width of the crawl space. So all the way from the bottom of the floor to the top of the floor, Joyce, is fiberglass insulation. And then there are bats of insulation in the roof. Okay. Of like the crawl space, right? So in between the floor joys. But That's underneath our bedroom. And then our bedroom does not have a floor above it. It is a vaulted ceiling So it is bitterly cold in our bedroom or boiling hot in the summer, just because It's there's three exterior walls, a crawl space, and a vaulted ceiling. Like, what do you what do you even do for that? Now I now when I have like run cable in my house or have electricians come or like when they mounted the TV to the wall. There's insulation in the wall. I've seen it. I seen it. But it just it feels like it doesn't do anything.

Paul 09:04

Do you need like one of those like vent balancing so you get like more hot air or like more HVAC air coming through those vents?

Drew 09:12

Well, I I will say that like if you if if my furnace is running and you go out to like our entryway where there's a where there's a vent and you hold your hand over the vent, the air's warm. It's blowing warm air. Yeah. Go into my bedroom and put your hand over the vent, it's much colder because that ductwork has to travel through my cold crawl space to get there. Now, also my thermostat isn't in a great place. It's in my entryway, which you've seen my house. Like it's right by the front door. That's drafty. It's a big open space. There's like a floor above it, like it's a it I my entire first floor is basically an open floor plan, right? There's very mint very little walls Um, on the one hand, I like that it adds a lot of natural light to the space. Um, I like it. We have giant floor-to-ceiling windows, and the windows are newer. I want to say those windows are probably six or seven years old. It was done not long before we moved in. So, you know, and again, I go around to the windows, I feel around the seams, I don't feel a draft. The windows are a little cooler to the touch, but It's fucking minus eleven outside. Like yeah. What do you even do? Yeah. So uh I've been calling insulation companies and I have some I have some men And and maybe some women, I don't know, coming out to my home next week to do some comprehensive energy audit type things where they're gonna like look around, make recommendations, like spray foam this.

Paul 10:37

I know people have I know people who've actually had like insulation put around their vents when they're going through like that kind of stuff to keep the the air warmer as it's going through.

Drew 10:47

Yeah. I mean In in the back part of my basement, some of our like stuff's wrapped. Maybe that's what we need to do to help with that.

Paul 10:54

Yeah, yeah, that wrap. It's like yeah, it's like that wrap they use on the outside of a home. Like they they can do that uh on the vents to help keep them insulated. Yeah.

Drew 11:04

Paul, that's not good enough. That's not good enough. That's not good enough for me.

Paul 11:08

Okay.

Drew 11:13

I went shopping.

Paul 11:15

Okay. What did you buy? Sorry, sorry. So much of this podcast, you putting a link in the show notes and me laughing uncontrollably. Okay, here we go. Uh this is the FLIR 1 thermal imaging camera for iOS smartphones, iPhone 15 and newer with USB-C. 24 by 180 super resolution. 80x60 native IR. You bought a thermal imaging camera for your phone. Okay.

Drew 11:59

This is not a review. This is a this is a warning.

Paul 12:03

This is is this is the cry for help.

Drew 12:05

No. This this this is this is a warning. Okay. Paul, when we had our home inspected, I was entranced by my home inspector who had a legit, by the way, FLER is a company. uh they are sort of recognized as the one of the market leaders in making infrared and thermal cameras. Okay. Okay. Okay. He had a handheld unit. That he went around and like he turned on the heat, he turned on the air conditioning, he turned on our faucets and was able to look through that and be like, Yep, you got hot water, yep, you got cold air, this vent works. I was like, this and like he even turned on the underfloor heating in our bathroom and could see the individual coils. Okay. Okay. That that was like a core memory for me. I mean, because because I'm a nerd. I like nerdy stuff. Mm-hmm. So I thought to myself, how would I really know where the problem areas are in my home? For the love of God, do not look because you cannot unsee Mm-hmm. Where the cold spots are in your house in the middle of a cold spell. Now, as a piece of technology, this is pretty cool. By the way, that little handheld unit with built-in monitor and everything, like they sell those. Depending on how much IR resolution you want, they go anywhere from $400 to like $5,000. Like it's not a cheap thing. Now there's off-brands, don't get me wrong. But I was actually intrigued by this little device. It actually plugs directly into your iPhone. You download the Flear app. And it works pretty fucking good. So I can plug this into my phone and I can point it at my wall. And I immediately see the temperature differential as gradients. But what's also really interesting is because this is a FLIR camera and you have the FLIR app, it can also estimate the reading. of the temperature that it's looking at. Okay. So like for example, there's a little spot next to my patio door right along the baseboard of my trim where there's a hole in the drywall behind the baseboard. Okay. So guess guess what I did? Ripped out my baseboard and patched the fucking drywall. And By the way, that's just one spot that I looked at with this fucking camera that now my fucking OCD nightmare mental illness. Holy shit, my house is drafty. Fucking brain can't unsee. So does this thing do what it's supposed to do? Yes. Has it helped me No. No. Now you know where our everything all the Now I know how bad it is. Now i again it does this on a gradient. So like when you're sh when you pointed at something Things that are warmer appear hotter on the color spectrum. Things that are colder appear darker on the spectrum. But it's relative. So like if I point it at my window and there's something colder than the window, That shows up as darker, but then if I shine it at the wall, the window becomes darker, the other thing becomes darker. So it's all kind of relative to what you're looking at. But as as a piece of technology, it's pretty cool. And I could see there being some use for it outside of like this current scenario. Um But but it it's actually pretty cool. So it it does exactly what you expect it to do. I think if if you were interested in getting a thermal camera, this can save you at least a few hundred dollars over a handheld unit. it uh and it does it does the thing now uh it is not powered by your usb c connection it's rechargeable itself yeah so it it it it itself is rechargeable so you have to keep it charged Um, but one thing that's really cool, like when you're looking at the picture of it, there's like a dial right below the USB-C connector. Yeah. So that adjusts the depth of the USB-C connector. So like if you have a phone case and you want it to be flush, pretty clever. Yeah. So like more things should do that. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. So that's pretty cool. So like I I have my stupid military tactical case on mine, right? And it's it's right up against the bottom. It's not going anywhere. If you did if you were running without a case, you could make it even thinner, right? So I thought that was pretty cool.

Paul 16:46

That's clever. Yeah.

Drew 16:48

Yeah. Um and the app is, you know, it's fine. It's not like it's not annoying or anything, but you like I can shine at all sorts of different things. Like I can actually see the warm air coming out of my computer Oh and like the space heaters that I've been having to run upstairs. Like I can see the warm air coming off of that. Um the the also the other thing that makes it a little more expensive is again, it's mostly um the resolution at which you can detect thermal uh gradients, which is what they call the IR resolution, that's what makes these more expensive than others Okay. So if you ever are curious, uh where are air leaks in my house? Oh by the way, don't get me started about if you go outside and look and look in So yeah, I'm gonna have some people come out and see like um and I've been watching videos about how they do like spray injection foam into your walls. Um I I think there will probably be some insulation work done in my house. I think it needs it. It was built in 1989. So like I said, it's a little bit of an older home, but It's not it's not a house that doesn't have any insulation. Like there are homes, I guess, 1971 and older, where like there's just no insulation in your exterior walls. So I can't even imagine how those people cope if they haven't like modernized their homes. Yeah. Yeah. So space here, I'd imagine. Yeah. Uh yeah. Just wood fireplaces. Keep it cheap. You know, I the one thing I am thankful for is that we have natural gas heat. I can't imagine trying to heat your house with electricity right now. Yeah. Um bio. Our furnace.

Paul 18:19

Yeah. Our furnace is yeah, natural gas, but our water heater is electric, which I just had to replace.

Drew 18:25

But yeah. That's same, same situation here, right? Yeah. I will say that my energy supplier IGS has been absolutely raking me over the coals. 79 cents per CCF, buddy, and only going up. It's rough out there. Affordability. Who would have thought?

Paul 18:41

Demand. Demand is high. Yeah.

Drew 18:44

I mean, good good company to be working for right now.

Paul 18:47

Oh, yeah.

Drew 18:49

Although although Although I'm told for people who know things that uh a lot of companies that'll have a similar business model are making money hand over fist on natural gas, but losing money hand over fist on electricity.

Paul 18:59

So it's always tough, but yeah. We we typically do good in these kind of situations, but not always.

Drew 19:08

Yeah, you guys you guys know to buy ahead. Yeah.

Paul 19:10

Yeah. And so we we hired we like a few years ago we hired our own meteorologist too to help us with those those kind of models and predictions and stuff. So yeah.

Drew 19:20

Huh. Your own weatherman.

Paul 19:22

Mm-hmm. Absolutely.

Drew 19:25

Well, that's interesting that your furnace is running that much. Because I thought last time we went through this exercise it was running considerably less.

Paul 19:31

Yeah. Well, it's also considerably colder.

Drew 19:34

That's true. Yeah. Yeah. But I but here's the thing though I bet you that if if if it were 20 degrees warmer right now, I feel like your furnace usage would be considerably less. Yeah. And I'd be willing to bet that mine's about the same.

Paul 19:47

Yeah, I would yeah, yeah.

Drew 19:49

And again, like I I I just chalk that up to drafty house. Like I I at this point, I really don't know what else it could be. I really don't. So anyway, that's uh that's my personal hell that I've been experiencing for the past like week.

Paul 20:05

How are you? Good, you know, like it's uh it's cold, it's cold. Uh Zachary came home for this weekend, so he's home right now after I record we're gonna watch the hockey game together. Okay uh I did have to get my water here replaced this week.

Drew 20:21

Uh so did it did it just stop heating or did it burst?

Paul 20:25

It it leak it was leaking. It was leaky. So it was still working. We're still getting hot water. We just my wife just happened to be in the basement because you know everyone's been home this week because everything's canceled. And uh she went downstairs and she's like, Paul, this isn't good. And uh we have a there's a plumbing company that's local out of Asheville that's like family owned that we typically go like I've used before. So I just called them and they came out. And yeah, I'll probably play it a little bit more than if I went to one of the big names, but I do like supporting. you know, local business. And that they were like, yep, needs replaced. And I'm like, well, when when can you do it? He's like, hold on, let me get a make a call. Today.

Drew 21:04

I'm like probably probably looking to see if you had a water heater to stock. Did you did you get a bigger water heater as part of it?

Paul 21:10

No, we we never we don't have issues with running out of hot water, so we got the exact one installed. Uh but basically what he said is like, you know, uh the water here is like really, really bad. And we didn't obviously we haven't been flushing our water here because we're we're done. Nobody does. It's fine. Nobody does. Yeah. But We didn't get the so water softener and stuff installed for like a like a year or two after that. And he's like, yeah, I guarantee you in that first that time in between when you Just moved in and before he got the water softener, he's like, you gave your hot water tank cancer and it finally just died. I like that description. Yeah, that's a good thing. I like that description.

Drew 21:48

Yeah.

Paul 21:49

He also the plumber was also from LA and he's like, how often does this you get shit like this? I'm like, like once a decade, dude. It's not it's not always that bad. But yeah.

Drew 22:01

Yeah, I think I think on average, I think most people's water heater lasts like five or five to eight years at this point.

Paul 22:06

And that's a that's about how our uh old ours was.

Drew 22:09

Ours? Ours looks a little newer too. The the the family that owned this home before us had uh five wait. There was four kids and two adults. So they had there, there's a big honking water heater back there. And it's electric too. And uh we do we do like some long warm showers in this house, so I'm thankful for that.

Paul 22:32

Yeah, but it was a good I mean I mean outside of having to spend that money, it was it was a perfectly fine experience. Except I will say, you know, I was obviously at work. you know, doing the stuff and and he I he I had some meetings in between when he was doing stuff and they shut off the water main and I got it out of that meeting and Drew, I had to poop so bad. And I like I just like Well you can flush once. Yeah.

Drew 22:56

Flush once. Yeah. Like just everybody poop everybody poop now and flush once and get it over with. Yeah, yeah.

Paul 23:04

But luckily it was only like 20 minutes after that when he was done. And yeah. Oh okay. Yep.

Drew 23:12

Talk to me. What are you what are you working on?

Paul 23:14

So Drew, so we've been doing a lot of AI stuff at my my job. uh we're really leaning into it and and and you know setting up mcp servers and and all kinds of cool really really cool shit so i've just been really really in engrossed in ai and its uses And uh I got like a little bit of exposure. So I uh before I mean I still pay for a chat GPT subscription, the $20 a month. And I was using that for some code stuff, but I kept hearing like like it's not just like Claude's anthropics models. It's Claude Code. The Claude Code is just fantastic. So earlier this week, I bit the bullet. I started the trial. And within like 30 minutes, I I had given up my credit card information and sort of paying. It's pretty good. It is claude code is Uh ma zing. Yep. Yep. So so uh I should be working on my coffee up. I'm not because I'm stupid, but I I'm like, I'm like, I thought so I sat down. I'm like, I want I want to have a project that I can use with claw code, something new. So I started building an app to track my filament for my 3D printer.

Drew 24:34

How much filament I have left, prints, things like that.

Paul 24:37

So I sat down with Claude Code, and you know, the moment it clicked for me is I asked it to do something, and it said, hey, basically, I'm summarizing. Basically, it's like, hey, I looked on the internet. I can think of three different ways to do this. Which one would you prefer? Okay. And when it did that, I was like, I'm I'm sold because nothing has even remotely done that before and like it's even so and then another experience I have so like it scan like uh You know, it builds that cloud. md file. And like, so like I tried it originally inside of Xcode, just not using Cloud Code, just using the cloud model. And it was fine. That's how I started. But then I really switched over to use cloud code. Uh and so it knows how to build my app. And every time it makes a change, it'll run a build from the command line. And at one point it's like it run it ran the build is like, man, I messed up. It's not compiling. Let me look to figure out if I can fix it. Okay, I found a better way. Let's Change that and let's build. And I didn't have to do I didn't have to tell it it didn't build. It just does it. It just like, hey, I did this change. Let's build, make sure it works. And it's it's it is. I mean, any any model is good for helping you with coding tasks. And but there is just something special. And granted, so like not to scare people off, but Claude Code is an entirely terminal-based

Drew 26:20

Yes.

Paul 26:21

Application. Entirely terminal-based. You type Claude from the command line. You type, but it's a really robust feature-rich, lots of commands, lots of options. You can control how verbose it is and how much it thinks and all that wonderful stuff.

Drew 26:36

But there's but there's plugins for like VS Code and Xcode, right? Yeah.

Paul 26:41

No, not for Claude Code right now. You can talk to Claude. It only uses the sonnet model, but I can even tell a difference between well, I mean Opus is better, right? That's the neuro model. But what what the workflows they have built into Claude Code and the way it integrates is night and day over the built-in like I've used like I've used co get up copilot. It's so much better. The integration inside Xcode, Cloud Code is just so much better. Whatever special sauce they have in that terminal app. And how it integrates with their models, it is it's incredible. The the the the speed, the quality of the code, the The way that it's like like how it explains all the options and gives you a gives you a chance if you want, either you can just say, just commit it, just do it, just write the stuff. Uh you can ask it when after it's done, you can say commit this, and it will write a git commit message based on what it does and automatically do it. Like it is It it is so much better than any other way I've interacted with to write code and and like to be productive. It is just Amazing. Whatever Anthropic's doing. Now granted, like I do have to watch my usage a little bit because like I'm only on the $20 a month plan. Uh-huh. And there's like they have like uh blocks of like four hours you have limits there. You have a block of like how much you can use for a week. You can give it like a slush fund if you want to go over that a little bit or like the next the next one up for personal is like a hundred bucks a month I'm not sure I want to do that, you know, so but the the the time I've spent with it is probab I mean This might be the most excited I've been about writing software in a very long time, is is this stuff. And you know, and I'm not trying to be like, I will go in and change things if I want to do something, I know how to do it, I will go in and write the code, but like Like when I start want to write a feature, I just like throw it out there and like, hey, like I want to do this. And it's like, okay, I'm gonna change these files and here's what I'm gonna do. And

Drew 29:03

Yeah, it it's very methodical about explaining the different steps it's doing.

Paul 29:08

Mm-hmm. Absolutely. It is.

Drew 29:12

So you know, you know what's really interesting? Like um I've also played with Claude Code. Um I currently don't pay for it. Um I do have I think I could get a subscription through work if I wanted to. Um but you're right. It it is currently the best way to write software with any sort of Jet AI assistance. And like you said, it's not even close. Like compared to GitHub Copilot or

Paul 29:34

No.

Drew 29:35

Some of the other tools that are out there.

Paul 29:36

Even use the anthropic models through like Copilot is not as good as using code. Yeah.

Drew 29:43

And and it really and as someone who has like worked with companies that have in integrated this with like the product that I work for, because that's there's some deep integration there too. Uh it really comes down to it's a little less about what their model was trained on and it's more about how it reasons.

Paul 30:00

Yeah.

Drew 30:01

And and how it like you know quote unquote thinks about your problem. Um, you know, to me it's so funny and and um I do take a little bit of like perverse pleasure in this. It's like, you know, Microsoft tries so fucking hard to inject Copilot into everything. And like copilot kind of sucks. Like as as an engine, no matter what you're using it in, it really kind of sucks.

Paul 30:26

Now I will say If you're a company out there and you want to dip your toes into generative AI for software and you want to spend the least amount of money I do think that Copilot is a bargain, especially if you already have like GitHub Enterprise.

Drew 30:41

It's a gateway drug. It's a gateway drug.

Paul 30:43

Like if you already have GitHub Enterprise seat licenses, it's only like $10 a month. per user for Copilot plus any additional premium requests, which I mean I I'm the one responsible tracking that bill. I think at work at one point we may spent like $13 more dollars on premium requests company wide It's very inexpensive. If you want to get into it, I think it's a good place to start. Yep. But quickly, I think if you if you let anyone, any of your software engineers use Claude Code, it is, it's It's night and day. It is it's pretty good. It's pretty good. And I actually heard. So, you know, Microsoft has all of these deals with OpenAI and gets access to their models. They recently became one of Anthropic's biggest customers because they try they used to be using Cloud Code and now Microsoft engineers are using Cloud Code. Like Yep.

Drew 31:41

And there's a lot of teams there that use Databricks too.

Paul 31:47

Well, yeah, I imagine.

Drew 31:48

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's it it's it's amazing how much they don't dog food, but you didn't hear that from me.

Paul 31:54

Yeah.

Drew 31:54

Yeah, I mean at the end of the day they gotta ship software too, right? Like they do, they do, and that should that's pretty telling. Um That's cool, buddy. Uh yeah, so you're just paying for the $17 a month one right now.

Paul 32:06

It's like twenty bucks, I think. Or I pay I or I paid like I paid for a year up front. I'm like, I'm gonna be using this like And even like using it for like just general chat and research. I I have a chat with it that's I use for like I ask it questions about 3D printing and it does a pretty good job of like telling me what to do and

Drew 32:23

Uh yeah, I don't I don't pay for any of that stuff personally right now. Like I've I've repurposed one of my machines into what I'm basically calling my AI machine right now. And there's some like um really smaller parameter models that are that are open source open AI models that I run locally. Um a lot of them fit into the amount of memory I have. So I have like a local chat bot that I can just bounce. stupid questions about like say thermal cameras off of.

Paul 32:52

Have have you have you tried ClawedBot? I mean Modbot? I mean open claw?

Drew 32:57

No, I haven't.

Paul 32:59

Okay, so this this is going around tech circles. No, it has literally, since I've become aware of it, it has changed names three times. So originally it was ClaudeBot, C-L-A-W-D-Bot. Anthropic was like, no. They changed it to Maltbot. And then recently, like today, I think they chart uh changed it to open claw. I'll drop this in there. I I this is something I'm gonna play around with this weekend. Let me drop a thing in there. What is it?

Drew 33:24

A local model?

Paul 33:25

So it's not it's not a local model, but it's a front end to models. So like how would it install gateway? Yeah, so like So one of the interesting things it does is uh it can integrate basically like it can integrate with iMessage. So you can like Send it text messages and it will do things for you. Integrates with Slack or Discord or whatever you want to do it. It has a web interface. And it's got a whole bunch of you can basically pick like AI, have it open AI or a Claude account, hook all of that up. Then it's got a whole bunch of plugins. Like it's got one for like Bear, which is why I used to take notes. And a whole bunch of other things. And it basically just becomes like if you want to do AI, but also do kind of like computer use stuff. Have it integrate with things on your computer, it is a very good way of doing that. And it's something that I'm gonna start exploring. And I this might be up your alley, Drew. I don't know. Like

Drew 34:25

You can browse the web, runs on your machine, any chat app, persistent memory, skills and plugins. Yeah, I mean I'll probably take a look at this. Well cool man. That's uh that's pretty cool stuff. I'm glad that you like it. I mean I think that you know right now i if I were somebody who were like considering getting something for my organization I think Claude Code is absolutely worth it. I work with customers who have their dev teams hacking together stuff in Claude, and it seems to do pretty good. Yeah. And I will say that I think Google Gemini is like the best LLM right now after having used a whole bunch of them. I think that's probably the best one right now too. Which I I'm not a not the world's biggest Google fan, but I mean Gemini is kind of night and day. And they also have like highly specialized models for industry. Oh, okay. Yeah. They they're they're doing they're doing good work over there in in terms of that. So like I think, you know, Google Gemini and Claude, like I think those are those are the tools that I think kind of give you the most bang for your buck right now. For at least from what I've seen in the circles that I travel in.

Paul 35:31

Yeah. I know we're using Gemini a lot at work for uh image recognition. It's just it's heads and heads and shoulders above like anything else out there. Like we used to have to like, you know, if you have an image of a customer's bill, it can pull all the information off of it and it does better than anything else. But Yeah, and I've used Gemini for like researching like things to buy as well. It's also good. Heck, soon it's gonna be powering uh every major both major smartphone platforms for AI. So like

Drew 36:00

Me. It's good enough for Apple, good enough for me, right?

Paul 36:02

Yeah, yeah.

Drew 36:03

So um, before we get into this next one, I have a late breaking topic.

Paul 36:08

Okay.

Drew 36:11

Paul, have you heard of Pi Max?

Paul 36:13

Pimax? No. No.

Drew 36:21

I I don't even know how to spell that. Here, here, it just I I got a link.

Paul 36:25

Okay, okay.

Drew 36:27

So super what the fuck is This is high N VR. Oh okay. Oh I I have been I am back on my flight sim bullshit right now. And um I am just so fucking frustrated with meta and the software side of the meta headset. The head like I like the Quest 2 I have, it's comfortable, it's pretty good quality, it has a high frame rate. Is it the most pencil is it the most pixel dense headset out there? No. Does it have the best audio? No. Right. Um, but I can wear it for an extended period of time. Playing VR, I don't get sick, I don't get a headache, I don't it it's it's perfectly fine. Um but the constant bullshit of Like getting it to constantly show up in Windows or it disconnecting in the middle of something because there's a fucking meta app update, or sometimes the battery doesn't charge even though it's plugged into USB all the time. Like I I'm kind of at my limit. So I've been out there looking at like, okay, if I were going to replace this, my first thought was, I will just get the next quest. Because again, like it it you can it work it works with Steam VR, it works with OpenXR, it works with Meta, it works with all the different kind of tool sets out there. Um, but a lot of the YouTube channels I watch, there there's quite a few people who make really, really good tutorials for like learning the different aircraft systems and things like that. And the one sort of recognized leader for people who really take this, you know, quote unquote seriously is Pimax. I discovered today that Micro Center sells them. Oh. I'm in trouble. Did you buy one? No. Not yet. Yeah, because oh I can't figure this out. So first of all

Paul 38:33

The other elephant in the room is like Steam's about to launch their new headset, which I suspected this headset, though, and this is leaps and bounds over what like the Steam one's gonna be. Right. Right.

Drew 38:47

Now, like a meta quest headset, like meta subsidizes some of that. So like I could walk into Micro Center and leave with a Quest 3 for like 400 bucks. Right. These are pushing like two grand. Yeah, yeah. And in fact, in fact, I just found out as I was like seriously contemplating ordering one of these, they are about to launch another version of this, which is mini LED. Ooh right. Right. Yeah. So like this has a lot of goodness. Right. It's uh it first of all, it's super bright. And even the QED and mini LED ones that they sell right now, one of the things that this is known for is being able to see like really dark colors and VR because everything everything on the headset always looks washed out because it's always shining light, right? Just like your TV. Like there's there's yeah differences between Q LED, O LED, and mini LED. It's it's the same thing with VR headsets.

Paul 39:42

Yeah. And the resolution and field of view are just So that's where I'm stuck.

Drew 39:48

So that's where I'm stuck, right? So like on the page I sent you, if you scroll down to the bottom. Where it's like where it says it's unmatched and infinitely modular.

Paul 39:57

Yeah.

Drew 39:57

I don't know which one to buy. Okay, so like the default one, they call it the ultra wide. And the the the difference between the three current available headsets and the um and the mini LED that are coming out later is what they call pixels per degree. Okay And basically what that is, is like what how much field of view, like how many pixels do you fit in one degree of field of view?

Paul 40:28

Oh, because all of these have the same resolution, so the wild field of view means you really get less pixels per the pixels are less dense.

Drew 40:37

Right. But there's advantages to that too.

Paul 40:41

Yeah, because you have either a you're not looking through binoculars anymore. Right. Yeah.

Drew 40:46

So like I'm stuck. Like if I was gonna order one of these, should I get the 50 or the 57? Because like those are the two choices. Yeah

Paul 40:54

I mean for flight sim stuff, I think the wider field of view would be better.

Drew 41:00

That's kind of what I'm thinking. Like the quote unquote ultra wide is 140 degrees with 50 pixels per degree. Yeah. Yeah. But the regular quote unquote 50 PPD is 127 field, 127 horizontal. With the same pixels per degree. So you're packing in a lot more for a smaller field of view, but not like outrageously so.

Paul 41:23

Yeah, that's true. That may be the sweet spot then Yeah.

Drew 41:30

Microcenter sells all three of them. Yeah, I d I I looked.

Paul 41:34

I looked just to see what they had. Yeah. Yeah, they have them all. Yeah. There's only one in stock for a couple of them though, so but the fifty PPDs, there's three in stocks. And I you think you're gonna be okay. I don't think those are gonna sell out by the time you make a decision.

Drew 41:48

And that's the other thing too. Like if I get it from Microcent or come home and I don't like it, it's a hell of a lot easier to go exchange it there versus ordering directly from PyMax too. Um and then of course these things have foveated rendering, which I've always been really interested about. Um, you know, they're they're they don't need base stations. Um You know, it it has all the same stuff. Um I'm I'm very, very tempted. Very tempted.

Paul 42:14

I mean, you spend a lot of time with in your flight sims, like Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean I'm going through that uncompromised realism where you can do the little slider in the cockpit and see how better the resolution is compared to others, which I'm sure is it might as well just say meta right there. That those dials look good. Crisp.

Drew 42:42

Crisp. Yeah. I think it's the foveated rendering that mo but I mean the Steam one's gonna have that.

Paul 42:48

Yeah.

Drew 42:48

Um but I think these guys did it first.

Paul 42:52

Yeah, I mean it makes sense. If you can track the eyes, then you can focus the processing power and clarity on where you're actually looking and it more re reflects like how our vision actually works where things outside of our provision is less blurry. So like why bother rendering those in full detail? when you you know you don't have like if you don't have to like it makes a lot of sense is if you can, you know, track the eyes good enough. And that's really the the, you know. I'm sure this thing has enough h horsepower to to to to deal with all that. So yeah

Drew 43:24

Yeah, the the the micro LED I think is the new one that's coming out. And wait, I don't know if Micro Center sells the micro LED one. I don't think they do. I don't think it's out yet.

Paul 43:35

Yeah. Well yeah, 'cause some of those specs are still like to be calculated.

Drew 43:39

So well, it's funny. Like if you actually go to the product page for the micro LED, it says fifty-three. Okay. And it's 116. So it's even like more in the sweet spot between the 50 and the 57. Yeah. So I don't but I don't I don't think this one's out yet. Because I think if you go to buy this, yeah, uh pre-order the full headset. Yeah Now these things also have what are called optical engines. So like if you just wanted to swap out for um It's funny, it's actually a Sony panel. If you actually wanted to swap out uh just the uh like the micro LED thing, like it's still a thousand bucks, but it's not two thousand bucks. So you could basically just swap that out if you wanted to. Interesting. Anyway, I I I found out right before this call that Micro Center sells them. So there might be a there might be a Drew's computer corner about this next week. Just heads up about that.

Paul 44:31

Yeah. Yeah, well I'm going to be going to Microsoft tomorrow to buy some filament anyway. So you're going you're going through it, buddy. Well, I want to get some I all all I have now is like PLA and I do want to play around with like some PET G kind of stuff. So I might go out there and buy a roll of that and Yeah. There's some things I w there's like some clips and things I want to print for inside of my printer. And I like I just don't want it to like people I watch people like, yeah, PLAs. Fine, but you really should have like PET G. Or there's the new high-tech PL PLA that also looks interesting. So I don't know.

Drew 45:04

Again, 3D printing is my personality now. Listen, I I I I I'm I'm fully for this dude. So uh give us a quick update. Like what what else you've been doing with it? Have you done anything else cool?

Paul 45:16

Uh, I've been you're printing some little things. My my wife wanted some dragons printed. I started playing around with have you heard like have you heard of like uh like the PLA support material? Yeah. Yeah, so I've tried playing I've I print I did a print with that today for the first time to see if the supports come off easier. They do. Yeah, it's it's very nice um printing some some more board game organizers Because I'm a big nerd. Uh but yeah, I just, you know, I'm I don't have it running 24 hours a day, but I'm constantly looking for and looking for things to print and yeah. Yeah, it's fun. I like it. Yeah, no, it's great.

Drew 45:53

You already looking to get another printer or No, no, no, no, no.

Paul 45:57

No No, I you know, I do look I do look at like the waist and stuff from the multicolor prints, and I'm like, man, having multiple nozzles sure would be great, but that those prices are significantly higher and I'm just like I haven't had I really I I've had like one bad print so far where I had like a little bit of a bad adhesion problem. Uh I haven't had like the spaghetti or the big block over the the hot end. And I'm just like, I probably should wait until I like have a big oopsie and get comfortable tearing this one apart before I get another one. So yeah.

Drew 46:31

And also a quick piece of follow-up. Have you played with Best Tastic at all? Uh I have I did.

Paul 46:36

I found a couple of little nodes, uh other nodes, but I I I have I the nut this is another weekend thing. I've kind of moved some stuff around in my desk. So I have like a window like right here. Yep. So I've moved my Mac Mini so it's like right in that corner. I'm gonna basically put it in the window, plug it up, and just have Mesh Tastic running all the time. Okay. See what happens. Uh I may take I I was gonna take it. I went to the Blue Jackets game and I forgot to take it with me. I was gonna take it up downtown and see what I could find. Uh but I have I found a couple other nodes, one close, one like not close.

Drew 47:12

It's funny. Yeah. I uh we were we were traveling to and from the Polaris area last weekend. So, you know, I just grabbed one of my radios and I threw it like in my like on my vi like my sun visor in my truck. And uh we were driving around and when we got back to the house, like I, you know, connected my app up and looked at it and I actually heard nodes all the way from New Jersey. Wow. Yeah. So they're out there. Yeah. Um yeah, I I keep looking to see if anything shows up from like South Columbus, but I I bet you you and I do have some nodes in common if we were to work. It could be that's all it takes and we can send each other messages. So yeah, okay, okay.

Paul 47:48

Yeah. I'm gonna I'm gonna put yeah, I might take it with me if I go to Micro Center this weekend. I'm I'm planning on putting it in the window this weekend as well and running a USB cable and just leaving it plugged in. into my Mac mini all the time and I can just hop on there and look and yeah.

Drew 48:03

Cool. Yeah. All right. Last topic of the day. Paul. Have you heard of Sheepsaver?

Paul 48:11

SheepShaver, sorry. I have not. I'm just I I purposely did not open this link just to see. Okay. Open source PowerPC Apple Macintosh emulator.

Drew 48:22

So I have I have a very, very soft spot in my spot in my heart for system seven. Yeah.

Paul 48:30

Yeah.

Drew 48:31

Uh again, like in the house I grew up with, I grew up in a house of educators. And they had access to Apple, Apple IIGS, Apple IIC, Apple Macs. Like that's what we had because we got education discounts on it if we wanted to buy one. Like we had a Mac LC3. Um, we had you know powerbooks and we had all sorts of stuff. And I just remember there were many, many summers that I spent indoors instead of outside with my friends playing classic Mac games. And there's there's some doozies out there, man, like Spectre and Return of Thor Castle, Marathon. Um You know, I I just I I've been I've been I've had a B in my bonnet for some time to really figure out like it's really easy to emulate video games, but what if you want to emulate classic Mac software?

Paul 49:23

Yeah, yeah.

Drew 49:24

And there's basically two programs out there. There's this thing called Basilisk and this thing called Sheep Shaver. Basilisk is good if you want to emulate anything before system 8. 5. Okay. If you want to emulate system 8. 5 or 9. You need Cheap Shaver. So like right now, for all intent and purpose, I basically little have a little Mac VM running OS9. Okay. Right on my desktop right now, uh currently showing the flying toasters of After Dark, which is which is very pleasing and very comforting to me. Um, you know, it's it's pretty straightforward. You have to you have to go online and you have to find a ROM, like a PowerPC ROM, very similar to what you have to do for like PlayStation or Dreamcast or things like that. You download that, you download SheepShaver, you tell SheepShaver the location of the ROM file, and then there are several websites that I'll put in the um In the show notes like Mac Garden, My Abandonware, there's a couple other websites where people have preserved various Mac OS system CDs or like System 7 disk images. And like you just have to basically have it boot to that and you're off to the races. Like you you you create a hard disk much like you do in VMware or Hyper-V. You install system whatever and it boots and it has sound. Uh, you know, you basically tell it how much ROM it has. I mean, look. Power PC has weird limitations. And there's there's things these emulators can't do. Like it doesn't support any sort of 3D acceleration. So like some more recent games you're not going to be able to play on there, but like all the classics, like the various sim cities and things like that. That all works. I'm having a blast with this. Like I I have like a system 7. 6, I have a an OS uh I have an OS uh 8. 5 and then I have an OS9. Um I will say there there is a fair amount of jank. Um like one of the things is like As soon as you get done installing an OS, uh the Macintosh setup assistant launches and it's like, what's your time zone? You know, this other stuff. Um, if you click through that and you get to the network assistant, your machine freezes. So you have to like quit before that step. I don't know. Oh it's like it's like Like if if you actually look at the documentation, it specifically calls that out, like, hey, quit before that step. Now you can you can pass through the network adapter from the host machine to it. So like if if you have a hanker into like brow browse the web and classic IE and Mac OS, like you could do it.

Paul 52:06

Okay.

Drew 52:07

I don't like handle like the the the

Paul 52:18

Yeah, nothing works. Nothing connected your own certificate.

Drew 52:22

Okay, yeah. Nothing works.

Paul 52:24

No.

Drew 52:24

But it's it's it's a fun exercise. Um let's see, what else is there? The other thing is like a lot of times when you go onto these websites to download software, it's a minefield of different image formats like some of them are dot DSK, some are dot img some are dot sit, some are dot toast, some are dot whatever. So So like the nice thing is like if you go with OS9, a lot of that is just built into the operating system. Like and you double-click a disk image and then you mount it and you copy the software and everything's fine. On older like like OS seven took me a long time to get like the right version of stuff at deluxe and the right version of Disk Imager and like disc uh being able to open these things and like Some things I had to like physically mount as CDs versus opening in the OS itself. Like there's that you spend a lot of time on that kind of jank. But once you're in there and like I'm playing Armor Alley and I'm scaling my resolution up and I'm good old-fashioned 1028 by 768 with like four times scaling on my monitor. Like It's pretty fun. Like I'm having I'm having a good time with that.

Paul 53:27

Um I'll I'll go ahead. So okay, so granted, I wouldn't use this for emulation, but have you heard of infinitemac. com? Yes. Okay, yeah. So I'll I'll put a link in there. If you just kind of want to poke, you can upload disc images and stuff, but it's uh it's all it's browser-based. But if you just want to remember what a version of Mac OS looked like and how it worked, and they have like all the different point releases and even some stuff from Next Step. all the way up to like uh mac OS 10. 4 Tiger. It's a it's a little neat way of just being able to like remember how things used to be. Yeah. Yeah.

Drew 54:07

Yeah, the the internet Wayback Machine lets you do that too, by the way. Okay. Like um basically like if you go on there and you go to like the software section and like there's like an old DOS game you want to play. Oh, yeah. You can actually play it right in the browser. Like basically runs DOS DOS box in like your browser, which is fucking crazy. WebAssembly, man.

Paul 54:26

It's yeah Well JavaScript runs the world, man.

Drew 54:31

Yeah, but uh quick shout out of like a website where you can go to get old Mac games. Uh if you go to myabandonware. com, this is just a great website to know about in general. So like if you go there and you go to platform and then you scroll all the way down to like Mac. And they have like every platform, by the way, in here.

Paul 54:47

Oh yeah, they sure do.

Drew 54:48

Yeah, uh there's a lot of stuff you can download directly from there. This is a good safe website. I I've downloaded a ton of shit from here, from like DOS and Windows and Mac and Amiga. Like I have an Amiga emulator too. This is great. Yeah, this is a great website. Now, the one thing is like if you're scrolling through the list and you see a little money bag on the like the screenshot. That means you can't download it, but they'll like they'll point you to Gog, right? They'll point you over to Gog to buy it.

Paul 55:15

So like if you still can buy it, they they send you that way. Right. And I noticed they didn't they don't have any Nintendo ROMs either.

Drew 55:22

Well or do they?

Paul 55:24

Okay. No. No? No. No. No. I mean I get it. Like l Nintendo's litigious. Oh, uh slightly. Yeah. So you still can find all the Nintendo rocks. Uh yes.

Drew 55:38

They can't kill us all, Paul.

Paul 55:39

They can't kill us all. No, no. As someone has uh who someone who could touch many handheld gaming devices without g getting out of his chair. Yeah, they're they're out there. Uh Yeah. And they're abundant. Even they have win Windows 3. 1.

Drew 55:55

So that of all yeah, so of all the ones to set up, that's like the biggest pain in the ass. So like what you need to do is you need to install DOSBOX, then you need to download like Windows image disk install it.

Paul 56:08

Install it in DOSBox.

Drew 56:09

You can do it. Okay. You can do it. Uh but it's it's it's a lot of extra steps. But yeah. Yeah, because there's there's like some classic Windows 3. 1 games that I I still play. Yeah.

Paul 56:21

Yeah. Yeah.

Drew 56:22

Yeah. My Abandonware is a great website to bookmark.

Paul 56:24

Yeah, I'm definitely I have a I have a uh a space an arc dedicated to retro gaming and that this is going I'm gonna drag it right in there right now and I'm just gonna uh pin it and I'll have it forever.

Drew 56:38

Yeah. And then the other the other one before I forget is um if you this website absolut is is a is a trash website. This is a fucking this is like the worst website I've ever seen in my life. Um because I think it was made on a Mac like in 1996. Here, let me drop this one in here. So the other website I would point you to if you're serious about trying this is this website called uh Macintosh Garden. Um again, similar thing. Yeah, that's ideal. Similar thing. But if you're looking for like OSs, all the different OSs, like if you scroll down to the right-hand side and click on operating systems. Literally every version of Mac OS ever made for a particular Macintosh model, like people, people have preserved every possible system image you can think of. It's it's in no it's in no discernible order. You cannot sort. You cannot like search sometimes just returns an Nginx error. Like you're gonna you're gonna have to click through a bunch of pages to get what you want, but this is a great place to start as well. Okay, okay. So classic back emulation. Didn't didn't have that on my bingo card this week, but once I went down that rabbit hole, I could not stop. Yeah.

Paul 57:50

Yeah, I may have to set that up and just like just just just to relive it. Just to relive it. Yeah. Yeah.

Drew 57:57

Dragon discs, the trash can, all that fun stuff. Yeah. Still it's still it's exactly the way you remember it, man. It's exactly the way. Oh yeah.

Paul 58:07

Oh I think that's a show, buddy. It is a show. Uh hey, doingtheirbest. com. You can find all the show notes there. Check us out on YouTube. We have shorts. We have all the video version of the podcast up there as well. And hey, thanks for listening.