I'm sure they're doing their best

Paul 00:00 Listen

What's up, Drew?

Drew 00:01 Listen

Okay. So I I get too much email.

Paul 00:05 Listen

It happens.

Drew 00:06 Listen

The best of us. Yeah. Some somehow, uh Somehow I had deleted the latest riverside.

Paul 00:15 Listen

Oh, okay.

Drew 00:15 Listen

Okay. So I had to like search through my trash, restore the email. Do the thing where I copy the link because like it thinks it's a uh like a physical location in Google Maps. I don't know. Yeah. It's just like, ugh. Yeah. Okay. Uh so flabbergasted here. It's been It's been a day, so just bear with me here. I'm still getting everything set up. Okay. Um am I recording on the right You sound good.

Paul 00:43 Listen

You so you're uh I can look at your Using uh Q analogue. Yeah. We're good.

Drew 00:52 Listen

Okay. Yeah. Because one of one of the things we're going to talk about later has been impacting my audio setup. Oh oh oh oh oh oh okay so thing things have not things have been like a fun god it's been a fucking mess. Hi, hi, how are you?

Paul 01:10 Listen

Good. I'm uh I'm a bachelor most of this weekend. So where is everybody? Uh my daughter, my wife took my daughter to Little Sib's weekend at Ohio University. So she's cur my daughter's with her broth. So they have a they basically it's a weekend the college students get to invite their siblings. Okay. Uh to the campus to experience a little taste of college life. They're currently watching an OU hockey game. Uh Uh so my wife took us one on the chin and she's spending most of the weekend just in a hotel room being for me being transportation.

Drew 01:50 Listen

I thought I was gonna ask, like where where where do the little sibs stay? They don't stay in the dorm.

Paul 01:55 Listen

They can if they want. Uh but my wife and my wife got a hotel pretty close to the university.

Drew 02:02 Listen

Yeah. Okay. That's fun. Yeah. That's fun. Yeah. You didn't want to go watch OU hockey? You like hockey? I wasn't invited.

Paul 02:14 Listen

Aha. Okay. Which is fine. Which is fine. Honestly, it's fine because like they left pretty much like right after school and I still had work to deal with and and stuff. So they would have to wait on me. And it's it's it's fine. The life of a mental manager is is not all not all it's shaped up to be sometimes.

Drew 02:34 Listen

Listen, buddy, I I would love to tell you details about my week, but it's it's not for podcast presentation. It's been it has been a week here for me. Okay. Okay. Uh all right. We're gonna we're gonna kick things off here. Uh I have some updates that I want to bring back to the podcast.

Paul 02:51 Listen

Okay.

Drew 02:52 Listen

All right. So the first one is uh I have been having a lot of fun with Mesh Tastic.

Paul 02:57 Listen

I I have I haven't put mine I I got it I had to order a USB cable long enough to put it where I wanted. And connect it to my Mac Mini. I have that, so I will be doing that this weekend. Yeah. Last weekend like I wanted. But yeah.

Drew 03:10 Listen

Yeah. Um, so what I've been doing. Is uh I've been driving around with mine. Okay. And I have been discovering a ton of nodes.

Paul 03:21 Listen

Okay.

Drew 03:22 Listen

This is the kind of thing where unless you were to like build A outdoor repeater that was out of doors, obviously, or on your roof to heat to listen all the time. Using these things indoors isn't great. So like you need to get like out and about with it. And I'll tell you, just from like driving to like Polaris or my gym or microcenter. My map is chock full of nodes. I got uh buddy, I got so many nodes. Okay. All right. Okay. So what's interesting about that is that that means that those nodes also know about me. So when they're relaying messages I am sort of, I'm like on the list. I get forwarded messages. Okay. My, you know, my shit's relaying, my shit's listening. So I'm laying on the couch the other night. Uh so you know you've bit you've been to my home. My couch is kind of like in my living room, my big open floor plan. And my one of my mesh tastic receivers was sitting on the kitchen counter. Not near a window, just kind of sitting on the kitchen counter. And all of a sudden it started going off. I'm like, oh, oh. I I have mail. I have I I I have I have literal mail. So uh I opened up my MeshTastic app, and it was somebody who was saying that they were communicating with nodes from an airplane.

Paul 04:51 Listen

Wild. Yeah.

Drew 04:53 Listen

Wild. It's like hello, hello from like 30,000 feet or something. And um he sent it to like well, I shouldn't say he They sent it to the general channel. So it it went to like everybody. A lot of people mute the general, but I kind of leave it open just because, you know, I'm lonely. So uh that was really interesting. Uh yeah, I again I'm discovering a ton of nodes. I haven't my mesh map hasn't extended past Grow city to commercial point yet. So our nodes haven't touched. Yeah, we haven't touched. But uh I bet you we will. I bet you we will at some point if you start driving around. Yeah. Yeah. So that that was pretty cool. I also want to come back and talk about my home heating drama.

Paul 05:34 Listen

I would love to I would love an update on this, Drew.

Drew 05:37 Listen

So now that it's warmed up a bit. A bit. Uh it's still pretty cold. Uh my furnace is running less, but still running a lot. Okay. I have placed a few calls to some insulation companies. And By and large, they all sort of say the same thing like sew your crawl space, add more insulation to your attic. Whatever. But I was able to get a hold of one company. And uh I'm not gonna give the name of the company yet Because we're still working through some stuff. And if I decide to go this route, I will share it, good or bad. Okay. But this gentleman came from this particular company, and he is an actual energy auditor. Oh. Now back in the day, Columbia Gas and AEP used to offer free energy audits. They would come to your house with a thermal camera and like Climb around your crawl spaces, climb in your attic, look around, make recommendations, give you tips, stuff like that. But this guy does that. So he came to my home and he had a much more expensive thermal camera than I bought.

Paul 06:46 Listen

I bet. Yeah. It's far as work.

Drew 06:48 Listen

And he spent he spent about two hours in my home this week. Wow. He was very thorough. So here's the situation. There's a lot that's wrong with my house. I'm not surprised. Now, I I have to say this up front because I don't want people to think that I'm naive, but this this guy's from a company who does a service. Yeah. Of course he's going to find things.

Paul 07:09 Listen

Yeah. Right. Okay.

Drew 07:13 Listen

Hear me out.

Paul 07:14 Listen

Okay.

Drew 07:15 Listen

So the the first place he took a look was in my basement. And he's looking around my crawl spaces and things. And he goes, okay, so here's the deal. We can absolutely um wow, what what is this? Uh Oh, okay. Sorry. No, I just I got a I got a very alarming like pop-up on my phone about an email, but I think it's spam. It's fine. It's fine. Very gullible. Anyway, so he crawls around my crawl space and goes, here's the deal. This is he goes, the crawl spaces are pretty standard stuff. We're gonna rip out the fiberglass insulation, we're gonna spray foam it. Your crawl spaces are already encapsulated because you have a radon mitigation system, so like we don't have to do that. But we're gonna rip out all that, we're gonna spray foam it, and you know, that's gonna help. It's gonna air seal it. But he said that's not gonna totally fix your problem. So like The crawl space under our bedroom, he's like, what you really need to do is after we do that, you need an HFAC guy to come in and put a register in there. And I thought, well, okay, what do you mean? He goes, well, the problem is right now that space is cold because it's leaking air. And all that cold air is under your floor in your bedroom. So that's not helping. He said, once we, you know, if you were to move forward with us, once we air sealed this, this for all intent and purposes could be a conditioned space. So his thought was put a register in there with a damper. So in the wintertime I can open the damper for heat to come in. And in the summer I can close it so air conditioning isn't going in there. Hmm. Okay. Okay. Okay. And like that's a recommendation where like, you know, he's gonna do something, but he's like, that's not enough. Like you gotta you gotta do this other thing. thing. So I okay, so I'm like, okay, all right, buddy, you got a little credibility now. So he's looking at my other crawl spaces. He's making recommendations. And then we go up to the first floor. And he is immediately looking around. Like he we go to the bedroom and he goes, This bedroom sucks. And I'm like, I'm like, thanks. I know. So basically the problem is it's a big vaulted ceiling, right? And he's shining his thermal camera. Shining? Pointing. Pointing the thermal camera. Yeah. Yeah, pointing the thermal camera at my windows. And of course, my windows are very leaky. And I said, well, that might be because I I didn't caulk these windows. I caulked around my my front door, but I didn't cock around these windows. And he goes, that would help, but that's not the problem. And his thermal camera had enough resolution that he could see, like, once he got close, like kind of close to the window, he could see the individual gaps. Cause like, you know, if you've ever seen a house under construction They they create a frame and then they put shims in the frame to put the window in. Right. And then they sort of like seal it up with trim and everything after that. He goes. What this looks like to me, and he wasn't gonna like rip trim off my window, he goes, What they probably did is they probably just shoved some fiberglass insulation in there, and it's not air sealed.

Paul 10:09 Listen

And I'm like You're getting cold air from the outside into your house through your window.

Drew 10:13 Listen

So I was like, caulking that will help, right? And he goes, a little, but you're still gonna have that cold air sitting there and it it's just gonna radiate through your trim. He goes. What you need to do is take the trim off, spray in, foam seal it, and redo it. Because he goes, when these windows were put in, I he's like, I would bet you $100 per window that they didn't do that. And I'm like. Do you do that? And they're like, no, we don't do that. Okay. But he goes, you're gonna want to look into that. I said, okay, good to know. Uh then he went up to my attic. Uh he looked at it and This is where I I'm not sure that I'm gonna like totally buy everything that he's telling me. Because I've had roofers and I've had uh my pest control company when they do my pest inspections, I've had other people look at it and say, yeah, your insulation looks fine. But he took some pictures and said, well, it's a little flat over here. We could blow in some more and this. And I'm like, I don't really don't have a problem upstairs. It's more of a problem downstairs. So like maybe I'm not so high on that. Okay. But then the last thing he told me about, and this is where shit gets wild. Have you ever heard of aero sealing? No. Okay, buddy. What if I told you There was a magical way that you could improve all the airflow in the ducts in your house. Okay Basically, what they do is they go into your ducts from the inside, spray what is essentially Elmer's glue to seal up all the gaps in your ductwork. Huh. Now he told me this and I'm like, first of all, setting aside the fact that I don't want my house to smell like glue, you're gonna have to help me with this one. one and he goes okay he goes let me ask you a question how warm do you think it is on the first floor of your house right now and I looked at my thermostat I said 65 degrees and he said okay let's go downstairs So we went back down to my unfinished basement. He goes, how warm is it in here? And I said, I don't know, it feels like 60, 62. It was 70 degrees in my basement. And he goes, he goes, turn on your furnace from your app. So I did. And he goes, you know, and like the furnace starts up and the blower starts going and I can like hear the ducks rattling because you know it's blowing air. He goes, come over here, put your hand next to the vent. Sure enough, there are little gaps, you know, in the ductwork that leak air. He said, typically what we do is if you if you do this, we basically seal all this from the inside because one This ductw is old. It sucks. Two, the people that lived here before us had duct cleaning done. So there's little plugs. Well those aren't necessarily. I mean, they're they're they're tight, but they're not super airtight. He goes, he goes, what this does is this seals up all the like the joints in your ductwork and it improves airflow through your house. So like your house will get to temperature faster because you're going to improve the airflow throughout. Okay. And I'm like. Ain't no way. Ain't no way. But but Paul, I've been doing research. Okay. Okay. And apparently this is legit. Yeah. Yeah. So I got the quote from this guy And the aero ceiling was not the most expensive part. Like all the installation work is because like they have to get a dumpster and like they have to do all this other stuff. So that's kind of the update. If if there are listeners, like all seven of you, that like are listening to this drama and you think that I'm totally crazy for buying into this, please. Put me on blast. I want to hear it. I want to hear if I'm crazy or not about this. Okay. So yeah, that's that's that's the current update. Yeah, I think I think I'm definitely gonna have either him. There's one other company I'm waiting on a quote from. Either that company or someone else at least get the crawl spaces and and um uh the like the rim joist around rim rim joist around my around my basement like uh foam seal just to get a a better air seal. So that that's probably gonna happen regardless, but I'm not I'm not there on the arrow ceiling yet. Okay. I get that. Yeah, but I guess I've I've done I've done a fair amount of research on it. So Alright, buddy, what can I do for you?

Paul 14:25 Listen

Okay, so this so obviously last episode I talked about uh vibe coding and and quad code and stuff, and I've been doing more of it. And I've been working on this little app to track my filament usage and my prints and like how much filament I have left of like that. I'm not gonna lie. The app is like really good, Drew. It's really good. It's really good. Does it make you feel bad? No, okay, so no, not at all. Not at all. Okay. Like I'm still being an engineer. Like I'm looking at the code that it does. I'm Giving it like a factor a lot. 20% of the code is is mine, I would say. But I like I understand what everything does. But it's it's it's it's getting it's getting really good, Drew. It's getting really good. Now, there is some things I want to do, like It's cross-platform. It runs them on the phone, the iPad, and Mac OS. There's some things I want to tweak, especially on the Mac side. to get it to look better. I I have some issues with like dynamic type, which is that ability to make fonts bigger. Some of my layouts start breaking when the font gets too bad, but I know how to deal with that. So I need to put some time in there. But I'm really, really thinking about putting this on the app store. I really am. It's it's good. It's good. It's good. It's a good, it's a good freaking app. Okay.

Drew 15:48 Listen

Okay.

Paul 15:49 Listen

And obviously I would I don't think I would charge a lot for it, but I do want to charge money for it because like if I'm going to spend time supporting this, like I do want to have a little bit of income. But I know that like I don't I I when I do this, I probably should just take like go all out and get an LLC for myself. All right. So so this money goes to like a company. And I know that you recently did this with your side hustle, your consulting. And I just wanted to like before I started looking around the internet, I just wanted to get some advice for Drew. Like, what would you recommend that I do? to get this set up cor like in a way that doesn't suck.

Drew 16:30 Listen

Yeah. So here's the thing. It's not that hard to Okay. And there's a couple of different paths to getting it done. Like if you want like a total hands-off, no must, no fuss type thing, I would tell you Use a legal service like legal zoom. They basically have templates that's like a mail merge for your information that will basically take care of creating your um Your operating agreement, like every LLC has to have like an operating agreement that has to be on file with the state that you're gonna create an LLC in. It it's not that deep. Um, there are like free templates out there that you can do this yourself that are just like generic enough that it's like generic LLC, generic call core, right? It's it's totally fine. It's mostly just about like having the document on file stating what the business per what the business purpose is. and just having that document. Like that is something you have to file with the state of Ohio. By the way, the state of Ohio has a great website Where and I don't have it at the top of my head. I meant to look at before we got on here, but I was like super distracted with work. They actually have a website. I think it's like um like s like Ohio Small Business or uh God damn Damn it, hold on. Now I have to. Now I do. Okay. Small business uh LLC register. Um how to start an LLC in Ohio. Uh starting a business. So it's Ohio Secretary of State. Yeah, uh register. You have to like you have to go to uh the Ohio business filing portal. Submit a business filing, it walks you through it. That's where you upload like your operating agreement, you know, who's a part of the LLC. It's good, it's just gonna be you. Like The worst thing you could do is try to add multiple people to an LLC, like everybody having a different tax ID, having employees, like Like if if it's just a single person, sole proprietorship, it's super straightforward. Okay. Okay. Now after you do that, what I would tell you is the number one thing you need to do is that after you file you with the state of Ohio, you need to now go get an employer identification number from the IRS. Okay. It's free. Okay. Okay. But here's the catch and here's the part that tripped me up the first time. When you do it, you need to make sure that when you file the EIN request, it has to match letter for letter, space for space. punctuation for punctuation, what you're filing with your operating agreement. So like if you if your company name has the word LLC in it. Put that in the It has to be in your thing. And then once you file that, you will get a uh EIN number. And it's it's pretty automated. Like I got mine back pretty quick. And Like that EIN number is basically if somebody requests like how do I pay you? It's your EIN or your TID or whatever, like This is how you abstract away Paul Baylor.

Paul 20:02 Listen

Yeah.

Drew 20:02 Listen

Okay. And you have an entity that's recognized by the federal government as like needing to pay taxes. Okay. Okay. Now, there's this whole concept, and I'm not going to bore everybody on the podcast about this, but if you follow all these rules, there's this concept of what they call piercing the veil legally. So let's say that your app somehow causes somebody some harm. Right. Okay. As as a sole member LLC, there's a level of protection there that if somebody were to come after you, legally all they could really get is any money that's tied to your LLC so if you're making money right and we'll get to that part in a minute You're sort of protected from damages be not a lawyer, not a lawyer, not a lawyer. Right. You're there there's there's a there's a limited liability, like that's what the LL means. Right, right, yeah. That's what the LL means. For protecting you so that, you know, someone could come after you for a million dollars. Oh well, I I made two hundred and eighty dollars off my app. So good luck.

Paul 21:03 Listen

Good luck, exactly. Yeah.

Drew 21:05 Listen

But if you're not careful and you don't do this right They can pierce that level and come after you. Now, as somebody who's gonna use this to get paid on an app, I think the risks are pretty low. Now, as somebody who does business consulting I am very careful about how I structure my consulting agreements because like I'm never gonna give a company code. I don't want that. I don't ever want to go hands-on key. board, right? Like right, right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Leave no footprints, right? I'm just I'm just giving advice. You choose to follow it. You're on your own. Right, right. So like that's the whole idea. So after you get your EIN The next thing you want to do is get a business checking account. Right. Okay. Yep. Um I use US Bank because they don't charge you anything for their basic business checking. Okay. So I would have loved to have used Chase because I'm in the Chase ecosystem, but just a like there's like fees and minimum minimum deposit like minimum balances and shit. US banks was pretty straightforward. After you get a bank account and you have an EIN, that means you'll be able to have a debit card. So if you ever need to take money out of that or pay for something on that account, that's how you do it. But you can also apply for a business credit card once you get that far. Fancy. So yeah, I mean now uh that LLC part does not protect you from collections anymore. agency that's like you can't run up a bunch of credit and hope to not pay.

Paul 22:34 Listen

Right, yeah. Well, yeah, I would I wouldn't do that anyway. I'm not, yeah, but yeah.

Drew 22:38 Listen

But like now now he now here's where this gets fun. Okay. So let's say you do all of that. And I I know I'm painting this in very broad strokes, but just Five drugs is what I need. Yeah. Yeah. But if you but once you do all that, like once you establish that base, now you can start paying for things like Claude Code.

Paul 22:57 Listen

With my business. Yeah.

Drew 22:58 Listen

With your business. But it's a business expense. And it's a business expense. Because at the because at the end of the tax year, and not a law you're not a CPA. Not always CPA. At the end of the tax year, what you need to provide is a PNL sheet. How much money did I make? How much money did I spend? And if you let's say you make a thousand bucks, but you know, you're paying $200 a year for Claude, your tax liability, give or take, is like $800. Now, it's not a one-for-one. There's limits. But, you know, the the the thing is like the money you make from your app, Apple's not gonna take out a tax. Yeah. You're on the hook for that. So you need a way to know like how much money did my app make, aka, how much money did my LLC make? And then when you're filing your taxes. And I I tried to do this with TurboTax. I didn't feel comfortable. I went and paid. Like I have a CPA that does my taxes now. He figures it out. Like I basically go to my accounting software and I basically print out every sales invoice that I have, when they paid. And anytime I buy something, and and again, this is where like accounting software can help you, if you tie that to your bank account. You basically reconcile your deposits with your withdrawals. So if I pay a credit card or I go to Microcenter and I have to buy a new monitor and I use my debit card. It tracks all that. So I print out a nice sheet and say, here's what I made, here's what I spent, figure it out. Okay. And then that reduces your tax liability for the money you make. Now the other nice thing you can do too is you can totally take personal draws. So let's say you make $10,000 from your app and you're like, I want a new gaming thing. Right. I can pay myself. Yeah, you you could pay yourself, right? Like you can withdraw that money, you know, you could transfer it uh via, you know wire transfer from your business account to your personal account. And it can go the other way too. It's a little harder to explain to your accountant like why you put personal money into the LLC, but All you have to say is like, you know, hey, I needed an influx of cash because, you know, sales were low or whatever. So it like that's that's the kind of stuff where it gets super beneficial. So I would say search for uh the Ohio Secretary of State uh starting a business Uh then you will go to the Ohio business filings. Um go online if if you want a copy of my business agreement as a reference, like That's fine. Um I can I can give that to you. It's not that deep. Yeah. And then once you're on file and you have like your your registration number, then you go get your EIN. Once you get that far, you could stop technically, but I I would use that to then turn around and go get like a business checking

Paul 25:45 Listen

Yeah, I think that yeah, I think that's what exactly what I'd want to do. It's just that way.

Drew 25:49 Listen

And then and then that's the account, and I don't know how it works like from an app dev perspective, like tell Apple to send my money there.

Paul 25:56 Listen

Yeah, yeah. F from what I've looked for, like turning a personal account into like a business account is damn near impossible. So it'd probably just be like registering a new Apple ID ID. paying for the $99. Maybe I like infuse this this LLC with a little bit of cash to get get it going, purchase that. From there and then yeah, and then I'm off to the races.

Drew 26:18 Listen

But oh uh one more thing. Uh this is new. Once you have your LLC on file with the state of Ohio, you need to um You must submit a FinCEN report. Okay. Now, this was one of those things where You had to do it, and then the government said no, and then the government said, okay, go do it, and then people sued, and then you didn't have to do it. I don't know what the current status is. But basically, like it's it's pretty easy to do some really shady shit with an LLC, especially if you're a foreign government or you're a foreign uh, you know, uh drug cartel person? So if you go to fincen. gov, you have to like basically say like here are the beneficiaries of my LLC. Because it's very easy to like hide large money transfers between people who are beneficiaries. Again, not a lawyer, not a lawyer, not a lawyer. But Listen, people bemoan the fact that you have to do it because like, you know, America and you know, leave me alone. Right. I don't want to fuck with it. You only have to do it once. I think it lasts forever or it has like a really long expiration date. Make sure you do that too. I almost forgot about that. Okay. Uh looking through my documentation here, oh you will get a state of Ohio uh certificate uh for your articles of organization. Okay. You'll get that from the state of Ohio. Yeah. Put it in this put it in the safe, put it in a frame, you know, whatever. Okay. Okay. Um looking through here. Articles of organization. Oh, the articles of organization, you'll actually follow it on the website. That's pretty easy. Uh like and their business purpose, like I have like literally one sentence. Um I'll again I'll send you a copy of that so you can see what that is. Okay. Cool. So yeah. So yeah, man, I think that's great. I think you should do it. Um it's not it's not that hard. So So like how close is it to like being production ready?

Paul 28:23 Listen

Dude, honestly, with the rate I'm going, though I've been like picking at it like after work or on the weekends. Dude, I've honestly like I I'm close. Like I know exactly what like the things I want to do before I ship. And again, it's not really at this point, it's not functionality. It's just little design things that I wanted to like, especially like Making an app that's like looks good on a Mac and an iPhone is a little bit of a challenge, but like I already I figured some of that out and I guess because that's some layout issues. So honestly, probably like I could have this thing ready in a week.

Drew 28:56 Listen

All right. Let me ask you a couple let me ask you a couple questions here. Okay. So how good is Claude at doing the UI stuff with Swift? I'm assuming it's Swift? Yeah, it's Swift.

Paul 29:05 Listen

Okay, so this is the this is fun. Okay. So The other day, I don't know if you caught this. Apple released the next the release candidate for their next version of Xcode 26. 3. Xcode is their development tools.

Drew 29:21 Listen

Okay. I didn't see it.

Paul 29:23 Listen

What they have done is they have partnered with both Anthropic and Claude. Okay. And oh Anthropic and OpenAI. And now you can use the the Claude agent, which is the brains behind. Claude code, you can use OpenAI codecs directly from Xcode. Now, granted, there are some features that like you don't get skills, you don't get things like that, but under the covers, it fundamentally uses the same engine. And they've provided a extremely robust MCP server inside of Xcode. That understands all of the tooling for Xcode and has a lot more information about Swift. And that's what I have been using this past week. And like so if you use like your user interface framework, Swift U, actually you can do with this anything now, but like Swift UI is the primary framework. And uh one of the features it has is called preview. So it's basically getting a preview of user interface without having to compile and run it Well now Xcode when you're doing AI stuff can like basically like look at the preview and make sure it actually did what you asked it to do. So actually like inspect the UI. It understands builds and understands build targets. I literally I that today today I was like this I gave it the vaguest prompt ever. I'm like, hey, because you know I my Apple has a bunch of like unit testing frameworks and UI automation frameworks. And I'm like, hey, can you build UI tests for the major features of my app? And it's like, I sure can. And it took about it took about 15 minutes, and I was just watching the token usage just go up and up and up and up and up. But like There's a couple tests that don't pass, and I understand why, but like it did an like an entire set of UI automation tests for my application in like 15 minutes. It's If if you're a developer and you're not doing this shit today, you are an idiot. Like It's one thing for someone with no experience to make an app and then have to deal with problems. But like if you're looking at the code it generates, if you're like like one of the things I've learned is like, hey, like when it does something you don't like. Because like Claude uses like that Claude. md file. I will give it an instruction and I'll be like, oh, and hey, update the claw. md file so you remember to do this in the future. And It works. It's it is l it's the productivity gains You can get and again, like a lot of this design stuff I will probably do myself by hand because I care, right? I want things to look out correctly. It did a great job with the initial UI and some of the initial design stuff, but like for this part. It's probably going to be very hands-on. I probably would use the system a little bit for some things, but because I want things to be just right and handle like dynamic text and and all that wonderful stuff. But like the the how quickly it got me an app that I would be proud to have written myself And like I look at the code is generating, I understand it. When I when it does something I did not expect, I ask why it did that. It has deep integrations with the the documentation and like the human interface guidelines. So it does things the the quote unquote Apple way. It is, it's it's it's good. It's good. And to have that all just in a tab, like a little sidebar right next code, that has The the the the the oomph of claude code behind it is it's incredible. Absolutely incredible Just okay.

Drew 33:18 Listen

I I first of all I love that for you and I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad it's working out. Now here's a question I have. So your coffee app I'm I'm gonna get back to it. Yeah. Okay, but like but when you get back to it, are you gonna try to like have Claude work with what you wrote or are you gonna just basically have it stored over?

Paul 33:36 Listen

No, I'm gonna I'm gonna have what I wrote, and that's one of the things you can you can do. I'll probably go to Claude Code for this. Uh you can basically have it Like if if you have an existing code base, right? It's so much of like the memory of it is in this Claude markdown file, right? Your the patterns you use, the best practices, things you don't want to do, things you do want to do. You can have Claude Code take its first crack at it. And it will look at all of your code bases, figure out your patterns, document it. And if it gets it 95% right, 90% right, that's great. I can go in and tweak it from there. So that's that's one of the things I want to do as well, is just kind of point clawed at it, like get and then and then I can start asking it to add features and do it in the way that I did it. Cause like with my filament app, I don't have like It's a lot simpler. I'm using a lot of like the rapid development tools, right? There's not a lot of layers of extraction. There's no unit tests or anything like that. With my coffee app, I have all of that. Like it's it's it's engineered. It's over engineers what it is, but it's fun. But there's some patterns that I that I use, like uh and I it it should be able to handle that just fine. And by and I know that because like in in for my filament tracking application, it specifically says says like, hey We're not using patterns such as like uh MVVM, which is model view view model, it's a way for like essentially if for for the plebs out there. So like a view is eventually it's it's the clicky parts that you you click on. All right, MPVM is basically a pattern where all of the logic for that is in another class. So like all the view just is is really dumb and is just responding to to to changes or or or things on that view model.

Drew 35:29 Listen

And pass and passing passing it to the model. Yeah.

Paul 35:32 Listen

Yeah, yeah, and and it makes it a lot more unit testable. And like in the the Claudette MD that for my filament app, one of the things it realized is like, hey, yeah, we're not doing that. that and it put it right in there. It's like, yeah, we're just just skip that. Just put it directly, you know, use it using these things. Yeah. So I I'm pretty confident that it should do a pretty good job with with that. So Interesting. Yeah, it's it's uh man, like it I'm honestly surprised how good things have gotten so quickly so recently. Like I I can't amaz yeah.

Drew 36:10 Listen

It's a fast moving space.

Paul 36:12 Listen

Yeah, like it really feels like like Like remember like when you like figured out Google and you got really good at Google?

Drew 36:20 Listen

Yeah.

Paul 36:20 Listen

And you were able to like pull information that people just didn't know? Like it feels like that. Like I could I don't I don't ever foresee Ever writing any kind of code again without one of these like agentic coding assistants by my side. It is it's You know, yeah. It's it's a ma it's it's it's amazing. And and it's funny, like I've noticed like The way I talk to it, I talk to it like a manager drew. Why don't you? Yeah, like I don't tell it how to do things. I just tell it what I want. And then like I like I never it's ne it's always I I maybe this is bad, but like I almost always like ask it questions like like I don't like hey I have this idea. Can you do this? Question mark. No. And it's like you have to be intentional. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, yeah, I absolutely can. Let me take care of that for you. Yeah, it's it's incredible. It's incredible. Brave new world. Brave new world.

Drew 37:28 Listen

Yeah.

Paul 37:28 Listen

Yeah.

Drew 37:29 Listen

Well, I'm happy for you, man. I can't wait to see the filament app. Yeah. Yeah. I need to get back into 3D printing and I could be your first customer.

Paul 37:36 Listen

Yeah. I mean uh that some point I'll probably get a test flight out there and I can send you the test flight link and Yeah. Okay. I gotta figure out how to monetize it. That's the other thing I have to do. That'll probably be take another week. I have some ideas.

Drew 37:47 Listen

Subscriptions all the way down, man.

Paul 37:48 Listen

Like I don't yeah, I don't know if I want to charge. If I did, it's not gonna it's not gonna be a lot. Like And I think I already know how to like mod like basically like you can't have more than X number of like tr prints or filaments, you know, just hardcap it there. And if you, you know, purchase it, you get unlimited or whatever. But yeah, yeah. Good, good, good stuff. Good stuff. All right, Drew, I want to he I want to hear about let's say let's change gears. We've been talking for uh what how long? 30 minutes, yeah. I wanna hear about the thing you bought.

Drew 38:23 Listen

All right Okay, so before I get into this, do you think I kept it or not?

Paul 38:30 Listen

I think you did.

Drew 38:31 Listen

Okay, so let's let's dive in. So last podcast. I talked about the fact that I was interested in trying a new VR headset. And sort of the linchpin of that was I found out that they sell this headset at Microsoft. center. So the name of the headset, the Pimax Crystal Crystal. Okay. Uh Crystal Super. Sorry, Crystal Super. Now Uh in fairness, I this I I had heard about this headset before. Uh this is the kind of thing where you order it directly from the manufacturer and they make it and they send it to you. I had heard horror stories of people who have gotten them and it didn't work and it's like a really arduous return process. So I never really bit. But when I found out Micro Center had 'em, which is dangerously close to my home. Yeah, you can take something's wrong, you can just take it back and it's their problem. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And not only that, like we talked about last week, like there's different models of this that I'll get to in a second. That it's like, hey, if this model doesn't work, I'll just take it back and if they have the other one in stock, I'll just I'll just trade it out So uh when we got done recording last week, I before I went to bed, I watched a few more videos about it and people's impressions and like What they liked, what they didn't like. Then of course, like every VR headset, there's some trade-offs with with how this thing works, but everybody sort of universally agrees that if you're looking for the highest fidelity, best image quality, full featured headset, this is kind of the one to get. So I woke up I woke up Saturday after we recorded And uh I had a couple errands to run. I had to go to my gym and help them uh do some networking and up uh upgrade some stuff because there's uh been a change of ownership over there. And after I was done, he's like, you know what? I'm just gonna go to Micro Center. Yeah. So I went to Micro Center and they were busy as hell. And uh it's interesting because we talked about this a couple episodes ago too. Like the cost of computer components is up. And um, you know, I listen, I know some people don't like salespeople who work on commission, but I I genuinely think that the the salespeople who work at Microcenter are pretty got pretty fucking knowledgeable. Oh yeah the the dude that helped me buy my 3D printer was great. Yeah. Like if you literally walk in there and you're like, look, here's my budget, but here's what I want, they're not gonna upsell you. They're gonna help you stay within your budget. They're gonna get you what they want. They're gonna give you, they're gonna give you opinions and they're gonna be good opinions. Like they literally know what they're talking about. I've never had a bad experience with a salesperson there. So the computer build area was kind of busy. They were helping people And uh this nice uh young woman came up to me and said, Have you been helped yet? I said, No. And I said, Well, I'm here because I want a Pimax Crystal Super. And like It was like a record skipped, right? Oh, you want one of those, right? Like I'm I'm about to buy a headset that the people next to me are trying to keep their computer built under a thousand dollars. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so I felt I felt like the big swinging dick in Microsoft, which it's not necessarily the flex that you think it is, but ever but like between the between the woman going and getting the headset versus me walking up to the register Several people said, ooh, that's a nice headset. Ooh, that's a nice headset. I'm like, and I'm just like, that's what I hear. I hope so. Yeah. I hope so. For this price tag, it fucking better be. Right So I got it home and I got it unboxed. I really didn't get to fuss with it too much that Saturday, but I spent pretty much all day Sunday with it. So let me walk you through this. Okay. So the first thing is, you know, my frame of reference for VR headset, this is now the fourth headset that I've owned. I had an Oculus dev kit. Uh which I just kind of got because I'm mentally ill.

Paul 42:14 Listen

That was my cameras set up.

Drew 42:17 Listen

No, that was yeah, okay, yeah, yeah. Okay. It did it did have external stuff. Um Uh and then I had um the HTC Vive. And then I had an like a regular Oculus. Actually, this is my fifth headset. I have a regular Oculus after that. Uh, and then I had the MetaQuest II, and now I have the PyMax. So I've I've I've grown with VR. Um my use of VR is primary seated experiences, the days of me like swinging controllers around and shooting guns or swinging swords, like I'm not I'm not there for that. Like I want simulation experiences. I love playing games like Elite Dangerous, uh DCS, Flight Simulator. Like I think that playing those in VR is amazing.

Paul 43:06 Listen

Okay.

Drew 43:07 Listen

Okay. So the first thing you have to understand is this headset is big. It's much bigger. It's a much bigger form factor than like the MetaQuest 2. Like the MetaQuest 2 is pretty compact. It's light. You know, um, I would say that part of the problem is because Meta wanted to keep it so small, one of my primary complaints about the meta quest 2 was like when you were wearing it, There were gaps that you couldn't eliminate, like here or here. So like it let light in. Um sometimes that works in your favor because like if you need to like hit your keyboard, you could kind of like do one of these and like see the keyboard. Mm-hmm. Headsets now have the double tap where you could do the pass-through vision. So that helps, but I it it's an old habit to break. And all my headsets have been like that. The Pimax is big, and the foam that sits here completely covers your face. Okay. Now, it's big But I wouldn't call it bulky. It's not that much heavier than the MetaQuest II. Okay. I would say that for extended periods of time, it's more comfortable. Like I have done several two or two and a half, three hour sessions in it I'm not a person who gets motion sickness in VR. So I haven't had that experience. But in terms of comfort or me sweating or anything like that, absolutely not. Like it's it's a it's a very, it's very well designed to cover your face. Um now the other thing is uh one of the most important things you can do with a VR headset is set your IPD. Are you familiar with that? Yes. The distance between your pupils. Now, I happen to be good friends with somebody who's married to an eye doctor.

Paul 44:53 Listen

Right.

Drew 44:54 Listen

So when I was getting my eyes checked, I asked her, like, can you give me my IPD? And she was so proud of me that I knew what that was. So like I have like my actual IPD. Yeah. Now with the MetaQuest II and other headsets, it's not exact. You have like three different settings and you need to set it to the closest one. This motherfucker is motorized. So when you go into the settings for the app and you put it in, like it literally starts adjusting them to the exact distance. Now this might be placebo, but I've noticed that, you know, I I never got eye strain or headaches, but For the other features I'm going to talk about, it's it's it's noticeably different.

Paul 45:44 Listen

I'm sure it's more comfortable to wear too for long periods of time because things are more in focus. Like

Drew 45:49 Listen

Yep. Um now the headset itself has speakers. We're gonna come back to that later. And the other nice thing about it too that key Keeps it snug because again, when you're playing a game and you're like looking around, you don't want the headset to shift because then things get out of focus, you gotta stop, you gotta readjust. This thing has like a head strap, and on the back there's like a dial. It's almost like a like a garden hose spigot. So like when you put it on and it's like in place, you kind of like ratchet it in there and it really keeps it snug. So like when I'm looking around, it's not shifting on my head. Now I'm not whipping my head around at massive rates, but it keeps it nice and snug. So the points there. So in terms of fit, finish, comfort, everything's good. It came with two controllers. I haven't even put batteries in them because I don't even use them. So that was all good. So let's talk about setup. Okay. So this obviously has software like everything else does. And I would say that we'll talk more about the software later, but setup was pretty easy. Now, the one thing I will say is that unlike other headsets like the MetaQuest 2, You have to plug in three chords to this. Okay. So the first one is USB.

Paul 47:00 Listen

Yeah.

Drew 47:01 Listen

Now anything you change in the app that needs to push settings to the headset Is pushed through the USB. It actually connects to a display for the actual display that it's powered in the headset. It actually connects to display port on your video card. So unlike the MetaQuest II, which is just like connected and the software and uh the the VR like runtime pushes an image to it, this is actually coming straight off your graphics card. Okay. Um now this headset has basically 4k per eye. So it's crazy high resolution. Um, but what and then it also takes external power. It is not powered over USB.

Paul 47:43 Listen

Oh, okay.

Drew 47:44 Listen

Now I will say that again, kudos to these guys. The cord that comes off of it is long as fuck. So like I can be sitting here, my computer's all the way over there. I have like no problem whatsoever with the cord reaching. Okay. Um, so basically the cord comes off the headset, the display port cable is built into that. The USB plug, there's like a USB plug that goes from like uh female to female USB. And then there is like a barrel adapter for the DC power adapter. So like it's not like three chords go into the headset. It's one chord, but it's all three of those things. Yeah. Okay. Yep. So once you get the software installed, it gets detected by Windows. Um there was a little but, you know One of the things that you really got to be careful of with this because it's so high resolution is the individual settings matter for performance. Um so it being so high resolution, I don't have a God tier PC right now. Like I don't have a 5090, I don't have the latest processor, but I still have a 4090. I got a decent amount of RAM, I got a pretty decent processor. Uh when I first plugged it in and tried to use it, it was chugging. Chugging. It was chugging. Yeah. I mean it's basically a 4K monitor per eye. And I game in 4K without problems. Trying to run two full 4K displays in each of your eye. Like that's tough. And again, credit where credit's due. Like I knew this going in. I watched plenty of reviews. Like people even with 5090s can't drive both of these things at full resolution. So in terms of getting it set up, in terms of the comfort, in terms of just, you know, how it looks. It does have like an LED that lights up in the front. You can turn that off. It's got cameras for sensors for the tracking and everything. But now I want to talk about what it's actually like to use. Okay, okay. It's incredible. Is it? It's incredible. So uh, you know, in DCS, uh, when you're playing it Like every little switch has a label. And like what I was playing in the quest 2, if I wanted to actually read what that said, I'd have to kind of lean in. I'd have to do that. Text is clear. Text is fucking clear. Okay. Um and this also has eye tracking. Yeah. Which is freaky as fuck So uh one of the things you have to do, and I didn't do this at first, but once I sort of tested it to make sure that it worked, I set up eye tracking. So like you put on the headset. And you get it all adjusted. You have to set your IPD correctly. And then it's literally like, okay, follow the target. So it puts a little dot, and you gotta like watch it go, watch it go up, watch it go down, and it's like recording your your eye movement. And then the background changes from black to white, it does it again. And if the calibration was successful, it tells you. And if it's not, it tells you like, don't move your head, only move your eyes, because it knows if you move your head.

Paul 50:41 Listen

Oh, okay.

Drew 50:42 Listen

Okay. So once I got that set up. Um you could turn on what is the killer feature of this. And this is something that I think the new Valve headset is going to do. And it's called dynamic foveated rendering. Yeah. The play the bit the PSVR two does that as well. And and the Vision Pro. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. So what this means is The actual resolution coming into the headset is low. Yeah. Which greatly increases the frame rate. But because it knows where you're looking, That is rendered at full resolution. Yes, yes. Now it's trippy. It's trippy at first because like I was doing some tutorial missions and it's like there's like a text box up here. Where I'm looking straight ahead, and because of where my eye is and it's in the field of view, half of the text is readable and half of it's Yeah. So that now there's sliders. You can set the quality of the foveated rendering to where like it's it's still perceptible, but not as much.

Paul 51:44 Listen

So you can make that like the area that it res that renders it full resolution a little bigger. Well just the quality of it.

Drew 51:52 Listen

the quality of it. So instead of it being rendered at a much, much lower lower resolution, if your graphics card can handle it, you can bump that resolution up. So it's not quite full resolution. But it's clear. So when you're looking, so when I'm like sitting here like looking straight ahead, I can glance down. I can actually watch the texture shift as I look down without having to move my head. Okay. It's pretty fucking cool. Okay. And then there was some there was some slight pissing around like to get settings per game set up. Um But it's incredible. It's incredible. Um now I will say that like the software experience, not the best. Not the best. But I don't have to log into meta. I don't have to put on my headset and tell it to use my PC link. I don't have to fuck around with all the meta bullshit to get it to work. I still had to set up an account with PyMax. But like I haven't had to think about that ever since. Um now you can use the headset wirelessly if you want to. Uh so like you know you could do the same thing you do with the quest where like you go to like their store and install a game and play it or whatever, but I have no desire to do any of that. Um the one thing I don't like about it is the headphones. So um let me see if I can actually get this to show up. So obviously I kept it. Um obviously. So these little nubs right here are the headphones. Okay. Are they terrible? Yeah, they're pretty bad. Um what I like to do is I like to wear my headphones while I do this. You can't like there's no way to get this headphone strapped.

Paul 53:34 Listen

Because they're too big. Yeah.

Drew 53:35 Listen

Yeah. Now, like when you put this on, like this is the side profile. Like my head's here, my ears are here. So these are just kind of like projecting sound at your ear, but they're still in the way. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Paul 53:49 Listen

Yeah.

Drew 53:49 Listen

You can't move them around, right? Now Interestingly enough, PyMac sells upgraded headphones for this. I don't want to buy them, but they give you instructions about how to remove this.

Paul 54:03 Listen

So you can take them off.

Drew 54:04 Listen

I can take them off, but if I do without putting something back on it, it's just like an exposed speaker. Now I I could turn the speaker off, but it's just like exposed electronics.

Paul 54:16 Listen

Yeah. Okay.

Drew 54:17 Listen

So what I've been doing for now is I have been listening through these because like the the sound quality being in a cockpit on an airplane, like It's not what you're there for.

Paul 54:27 Listen

Yeah.

Drew 54:28 Listen

Yeah. I'm not playing Tarkov where I need like to hear full 3D sound around me. All I hear is engine rumble and things beeping at me that I'm about to die. So it's not that big of a deal. Okay. But yeah, it's uh it's pretty fucking incredible, if I'm being honest with you. It really, really is. It is quite special. So was it worth the investment? Right now, I'd say yes. I've been spending a lot of time in it. Um now my time with VR is usually cyclical. Like I'll be super into it for like a month and then I'll kind of put it away and then I'll come back to it. Um, this has obviously spending that amount of money has made me want to play more VR, which is a good thing. Yeah. So I've been I've been fucking around with it. You know, I've been like really spending time with my controls and practicing. I would say the one the the number one thing I don't like about it though is I like to stream while I play a game. Here's the problem. When you mirror what's being sent through VR and you're using foveated rendering. It's sending the shit image to the stream.

Paul 55:37 Listen

Yeah.

Drew 55:38 Listen

So anybody watching me on stream, it looks like blurry colors. So I need to find a way, and I I I have a couple ideas because like I was reading online, like there's no way to like take the image from the headset and stream it. It you what what it basically does is like put a copy of what you're looking at on the screen, but it's subject to the foveated rendering. So Yeah. What I need to do, like what everybody recommends is you just like crop a little box out of that and blow that up so it looks a little bit better.

Paul 56:08 Listen

Okay.

Drew 56:08 Listen

They won't people won't see your full field of vision, but they'll be able to see enough. That makes sense. Yeah, so that part is kind of a bummer. Um, I didn't have that problem with the quest 2 because I could just render it at full resolution, but yeah, I don't do I don't do that here. So that's kind of the only bummer. Okay. Now if I rec now, if I record and play it back, it's in full resolution.

Paul 56:30 Listen

Okay. Now has this made you want to put more money into your PC?

Drew 56:37 Listen

No. Good.

Paul 56:38 Listen

Okay, good.

Drew 56:39 Listen

Good for you. I I don't think a 50-90 fixes the problem. Okay. I think I think that to really use this thing with the games that I want to play. I I have to use those settings. Okay. I don't I don't think that I I I am in the market for new computer equipment, but not for my gaming PC.

Paul 56:57 Listen

Okay.

Drew 56:58 Listen

I I really want to invest more in like my Linux machine and put like an actual like really powerful GP unit for AI stuff. Okay. But that like that is so fucking expensive. Yeah. Especially now. Especially now. Well, especially now. Right. Um, interestingly enough, like Micro Center has been selling like the workstation AI cars. Those haven't gone up in price. Um, but they are selling out and I don't think they're getting any more. So that's the problem. They haven't gone up in price, but they're probably not gonna get any more. All those are going to data centers and not to a microcenter. Yeah. Yeah. These aren't like the these aren't like the server ones. Like these aren't the H one hundreds. They're the Blackwells, so they're like they're more workstation focused, but they're still like 48 or 96 gigs of RAM, which that's kind of like what you need. You need RAM, you need VRAM. So and they don't take, I mean, I could probably plug one into my existing machine with like without having to get a bigger power supply, because like they don't draw as much as like a gaming one, but they still draw a lot. So Anyway, yeah, so I ended up keeping it. Um, probably gonna, you know, probably gonna keep playing it. Um if you are the kind of person that wants to watch me get blown up in games, like definitely follow me on Twitch. But Pit Ferg on Twitch, right? Pit Ferg on Twitch, P-I-T-T-F U-R-G. All right. So I have to go to a work call.

Paul 58:22 Listen

Okay.

Drew 58:22 Listen

Yeah. So let's wrap this up.

Paul 58:24 Listen

Let's wrap this up. We'll keep this short. Jointhebest. com. You can find all the links, all the show notes for on YouTube, watch our videos there. And hey. Thanks for listening.