 It's time for Mackie Gab and listener you fossa brings us our quick tip of the week Saying I was reading a reddit post on my iPad when a reminder showed up near the top as they do when you have them navel I accidentally swiped down on the reminder and something interesting happened a menu popped up next to the reminder Floating at the top providing me with a few options mark has completed remind me in an hour Remind me in the morning remind me tomorrow just swipe down on those little notifications and sometimes you might get a little bit of interactivity More quick tips like this plus your questions answered Why isn't my computer working? There it is plus your questions answered today on Mackie Gab 1014 for Monday December 18th 2023 Greetings folks and welcome to Mackie Gab the show where you send in quick tips like that you send in your questions We answer them you send in cool stuff found We string it all together into an agenda so that we are each both incentivized but also very likely to learn at least five new things every single time we get together Sponsors for this episode include green chef comm slash 6 0 mg g use code 6 0 mg g 60 mg g to get 60 percent off We'll talk more about that great meal delivery service in a little bit for now here As awake as I'm gonna be in Durham, New Hampshire. I'm Dave Hamilton and here in South Dakota not snowy yet I'm Adam Christensen And here again in Osaka, Japan It's pilot Pete have been all over Asia Back in Osaka headed home tomorrow for the holidays. Oh nice That's great. So you yeah, because you recorded last week show 1013 in Osaka very hotel. Yep Yep, different but you're in a different room, right because you have not been there Yeah, you you've been elsewhere for the week gallivanting not just not just chilling the sole twice Shenzhen China Wow I went somewhere else, but I have no recollection Did you did you take off and land the plane safely Pete? I did well, that's what counts That's what really counts. That's what guangzhou guangzhou china. That was my other location. Oh, okay That's where it was. All right. Yeah, cool fun Fun. Well, hopefully it was fun and profitable perhaps, but you know what? It's the best part of the job I mean there there's a lot of hassle to being a commercial pilot the recurrent training the rules the regulations the security the this that Moving the airplane is still fun. So as long as that's still fun, I'm gonna keep doing it That's great, man. I feel the same thing the same way about playing the drums, you know playing in a band It's like I always say if you were to call me At three in the afternoon on the day of almost any gig that I have And tell me it was canceled you'd be my best friend Because that's the point in the day where like the fiasco part of it settles in I gotta Pack up my car. I gotta make sure I have everything I gotta drive to the gig and then deal with load in and whatever Management and club owners and like all the stuff and get the sound set up and all the things But once everything's there and on stage and set up and I'm ready to play Now you can't take me out of there, right like that's That's the that's the fun part. Yeah, you probably have that with theater adam same kind of thing, right? Yeah. Yeah I'll be doing that tonight. Hopefully hopefully. Um, yeah, I'll be, uh, you know doing all the makeup stuff Yeah, they're early and hanging out Yep, ready Yep. Yep. Nice. Yeah, it's fun. So it's good good to have a passion tell us about your passions Like we we you know, we talk about art sometimes on the show and so like if you are If you are if you care to send us an email feedback at macgeekab.com tell us what you love to do and probably Technology gets involved in it somehow I could like we've already talked on the show about how technology is involved in the the things that we each do So, you know, like I need the technology to come to my to my theater thing I think it's getting there. You know, I need that I need that face thing for like I hate the makeup part of it just like, you know, if I could stick a thing on my face and it just goes Sit You know and you're done. Does that exist? I think I think they're working on those sorts of things. I've seen them I want one of those just to shave my face Yeah, yeah Yeah, I was saying that to Lisa just last night actually not last night anybody watching knows that i'm lying about the timing of this But it was true last week. I was saying this to Lisa I was like, oh, yeah, I wish I could just like put my face in a thing and have it shaved She's like really the three minutes it takes you to shave. She's like, that's that's what you want technology to solve I'm like, uh-huh. Yeah, yeah, correct. Correct You think they could do it with lasers while you sleep or something that I want it to do it Yeah, while I sleep, I don't even want to have to wait for it to do it for me I I want to be asleep while it's half. Of course. I want to be asleep while it's happening I also want to be asleep while I fly on airplanes Um, me too. Uh, yeah Wait, wait, no, no, no. Hang on. Okay. This is going in a bad direction Pete and I have have had eight hours of sleep um Collectively, but you know eight hours of sleep leading into this show. All right, Alex But not together. No, you're on the literally the other side of the world Like it is 9 a.m. For me. What what time is it for you Pete? I am three minutes before midnight. It is almost Saturday morning here So it's 9 a.m. Friday in on the east coast and yeah, right midnight on the uh on japan time That's amazing. Yeah. Yeah, so it's yeah long ways away. It's almost you're in the future, Pete Uh, okay Alex we got we got quick tips. Alex says Speaking of reminders, I'd like to share in that in the reminders app It's possible to place the url field not place in the url field not just a website link But also an email address and after exiting the edit mode The app will show an action button leading to a new email composing a screen in your mail app More than this we can even attach a phone number in this field, but it takes a little more work than normal In the url field for a phone number type t l colon And then the required number and that is the correct url structure for a phone number at this time Uh, such move will lead to a nice little phone number button in the list of reminders Sure, it's possible to write either an email or phone number just in the text of the reminder Or the additional notes field and the app will highlight them with blue and make it clickable But only the url field method will work will make a dedicated button quickly accessible right from the list view Also, it's possible to fill the url field with a link starting sms colon that would send a message Yeah, he uh, he he he found a webpage with this info over on talk tidbits.com So we will put a link in the show notes no pun intended but uh Yeah, it this is what's what's cool about it is that you just have to if you have a link on the clipboard You just highlight That the text that you want to be linked and then just paste it and it will it will put a link there and It turns out that also works in word presses back end If you use wordpress to publish your website You don't have to open up the link editor If you have a link on your clipboard just highlight text hit paste and it will make that text into a link for you Which if you've already been doing it in wordpress is one of those things that's like, yeah, of course, Dave And if you haven't been doing it in wordpress, you're going. Oh my god. I can't believe that works So because that's how we all felt the first time we found that. Yeah, I can't believe I've been doing it This the slow way for so long Yep You got Pete you you have something to add to that Maybe Oh, no, you have something to add to the next one. You're gonna you're gonna read us the next one Yeah, okay, cool. You're um He's I love it. I love this for you, Pete, but you're you're muted and so Um, we've been we've been unable to hear your comments. Well, you know what's funny is I said, no, I've got something to add to the next one and you went. Oh, you've got something to add to the next I told you we had eight hours to sleep. Yeah, you know what I was gonna say Yeah Oh boy, folks, you may want to just go away now No, don't do that. You'll miss this next great tip and all these questions we've got coming up Hey, james wrote in he said sometimes as we all know we move things around on our computers and we don't remember why how Either to move them back or in some cases We want to move them back to the original default spot He says I believe we've all heard this once before on the mgg But to bring it back around for our newer listeners. Hey and while I was reading that That came to me Our listeners were a community. That's awesome. Yep to our listeners. So, um Yes, so used to possessive when you write to us. We love it You're able to move the spotlight search window wherever you want on your screen start by either clicking on the menu icon in the top right Or use your Keyboard shortcut to bring it up the default is command in the space bar Your spotlight window then just please before you can type in anything or after you start typing it works both ways You can click and drag this element anywhere on the screen Yeah, so what you might be asking but What happens if you move it off the screen enough to not know where it went or better yet enough that you can't even recognize That there is a spotlight window. It's now well out of view and you can't use it any longer So here's the second part of the tip press or click and hold on the spotlight icon Up in the menu bar for about two seconds and bam it resets it back to the top So Yeah So I went okay, and I went to do that and I noticed that I didn't have a spotlight icon in my menu bar And I went well, I'll just go into settings and put it in Not so fast. It just I had to look around long And carefully and I finally found it. So There is an option in mac os 14 uh, sonoma system settings control center menu bar And then there's a little toggle don't show in menu bar or show in menu bar the The control the spotlight icon. Yeah, yeah, and that was the case in ventura as well Yeah, okay. Yep. Yeah So yeah, so that that little tip to get it back to the center Doesn't work if there's no icon there So you need to have that icon there to and that's how you go find it to get it back If you if it's if you don't have the spotlight icon up there And then one other thing I've noticed about this though is that I tried to move the spotlight Search off my screen completely and I am unable I I can only Have it on the screen try and drag yours off the screen See if you can I can't mine is somehow pasted. So I can't completely hide it for myself I can't completely hide it But I could get it to a point where I might not see it when it comes off Right, you know, oh, yeah, it's yeah, it I could move it far off But I wonder if that's an external monitor thing. Maybe if I was on my built-in screen I'm in clamshell and it's I can't get to that screen, but I can certainly push the spotlight Dialogue way off to the edge. Yeah, I was able to get mine to the edge like that. Yeah, for sure Yeah, so I had turned sidecar off of my iPad because it wasn't playing nicely this morning before So I didn't try to move it over there or anything but Interesting. Yeah, that's a good tip. I I I never knew that and yeah that whole just a reminder of that paradigm of things in the menu bar Being controlled in the control center preferences and not in their own preferences It's a good reminder that yes, go look there because that you'll find in fact I recommend you go look there in you had at Pete the the Do it system settings control center and and then take a look at all the things that you can add or remove You can customize control center and the menu bar right there And and really tweak it to your liking. Yeah, and and one other point So in here, I forgot I that this happened to me Dave when I was trying to bring it back up on there I use bartender So when I put it back in the menu bar it defaulted to the hidden Of course, right. Yeah, which is fine. I can you know the little three dots and I can pull it up But guess what doesn't work if it's in the hidden menu bar Clicking that that quick tip doesn't work. Oh President holding it does not it needs to be in the real Oh, so this really is like some mac os Intercept or something that yeah, I can see that I can see where bartender wouldn't necessarily Get that where you want it and we've mentioned bartender before on cool stuff On bookman that I can't live without it. There's just way too much real estate being taken And bartender fixes that especially with the notch on you know newer macbooks Bartend yeah bartender is is and in my mind to fault it off I was left a couple days ago. I'm looking all over going. Why you know, why can't I find where is it? What's yep, and oh, that's why bartender is not on and running Yeah, so I had to restart that. Oh my computer works again. My computer looks like my computer again. Yeah, exactly. Yep Yep. Yeah, that's one of the things that I notice And it's not immediately obvious like you it's like wait something's wrong What's wrong? Oh bartender's not running got it. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah speaking of thing Oh, go ahead. I was just gonna say I can't live without bartender No, and also I keep I keep hate to keep You know belaboring this point, but Uh, I've been a bartender user for a long time, but it is part of set up Oh, yeah, let's just throw another half. Yeah, right Yep, which is not really an ad. I mean, it's just I My only issue I just wish I'd invented set up because they've they've figured it out They have figured it out my only issue with set up and I don't run into this often But it ha it has happened more than once Where I go to run an app that I have as part of set up And it's been more than 30 days or something And so it needs to authenticate my set up subscription with set up servers In order to to do it and if I'm not online at that moment in time, which is even on an airplane That's not it's like infrequent I It like it becomes an issue. Yeah, like there was and there was something for I use an app we might as well I might as well share about this, um, which I've talked about before And I guess maybe I should do it now the the the sonoma way But pre sonoma and still currently because you know habits I use an app called unite from bzg apps To create a safari but like a bespoke application that really is just a safari window And I use that when we do this show In fact, I use it for a one for each of my shows so that I can have our chapters and timestamps As a separate app even though it's just a google doc And it's huge because I don't have to dig through tabs in safari to find our agenda when we're doing the show I just bring that app up and it's right there. I have not yet done that in in in Sonoma, but the unite and coherence are the two apps from bzg that that let you do this with either unite lets you do it with a safari engine Coherence let you let you do it with a chrome engine They are both part of set up and there was some problem I had where I just couldn't launch either of these things even though I was on the internet because it was like Oh, we need to authenticate you. I'm like, I am authenticated So I went and used a direct license for the app and got rid of it But have you guys done that in in sonoma yet the the bespoke app for a safari web page? Thing whatever we're supposed to call that. Oh the built-in stuff. Yeah. Yeah, no Okay, I never used that feature before though even with any of those third party apps, right You know, I don't know there's there's all that stuff that apple puts together that you use Maybe try it out. You know remember for a while when they had the last time we had widgets Yes, that thing where you could take part of a web page and make it into like a widget You know, you would select the web clips or something whatever they called it. Yep. Yeah. Yep Yeah, I'll have to see how it works But I do like the way Unite and coherent coherence works. So like well, well, we're quickly still on the the setup thing I want to mention that I had done the subscription and you save 10% if you pay annually, of course And so what I've always done it's actually cheaper than a second subscription is you could buy Additional Oh for family members or whatever. Yeah, and now and then I just went and looked at They've got a family plan now jump on set up family up to three people set up families for you and three more people So Yeah, very good making it Yep, super economical Not to have it Speaking of things that have been added to mac os 14.2 came out since the last time we recorded and one of the things that I really like In 14.2 is how easy they now make it To add a sticker in messages. Well, you're right like in the previous sort of major update to 14 Uh, I guess 14.1 If you right clicked on a message you you got at the at the top of that right click screen you got all of your Um reactions the heart the thumbs up and down and and all those And I like that I have integrated into my life Like very completely I use it all the time It's so fast and so efficient to be able to do and now They've added a an ad sticker thing right there Which makes life a whole lot easier. So I was happy to to find that so I figured I'd bring it up 17.2 for ios came out this week two guys did has anybody messed with the journal The journaling app No, but this would this would be something my daughter would probably actually love so i'll probably be Bringing it up with her. She just recently updated her iphone finally and so yep, I'll Let her know that this is now available. I it I like it. Um, I I started You know playing with it and it's I mean listen Lots of people have been keeping a journal long before this app existed, right? I I know plenty of people who keep a journal in notes Uh, the which is nice because there is a mac equivalent of that app So if you want to type on your mac you can do that to my knowledge There is no mac equivalent of the journal app yet I'm guessing it would probably come if people start using this But it the reminders that it does for you and kind of the prompts and and that it really It makes the process Very streamlined and of course it keeps all your data secure and encrypted and all those things that are important for a journal Because that's the last thing you Want somebody that's like, you know, your own thoughts. So Yeah, um So it's it's good. I'm curious you folks let us know feedback at macicub.com if uh, if there are any Features in 14 to or 17 to or even in 14 in general that we haven't talked about that are your favorites that you've integrated into your life You heard him feedback at macicub.com I'm a little old school when it comes to like writing stuff and journaling. This is I use for development But if I was journaling, I probably end up on a paper journal bag to those Paper and pen still work I take all my out. I take all my development notes on paper and pen. I I try to do like I have You know mark How can you see the paper? Yo, it's on your mac. You got a battery You're falling you got a battery. Yep. Yeah. All right. I'm sorry. I'll stop now. Oh, no, it's totally fine It's totally fine. Yep Yep. Yep All right, we have A quick tip from zavier here It says, you know how you hold down the option key when viewing menus in the mac os menu bar? Well What if I told you that's not the only key? For example in the menu bar if you I find if you add the option key you get add to sidebar Hold down the shift key and see add to dock in the file menu of text edit in others word processors Hold down the shift key to turn duplicate into save as So, yeah fun stuff. Um Yeah, the add add to the sidebar in the finder. I like that's Yeah, handy handy things. So yeah, try things shift key option key command key Like there are things that that change Depending on keys and even combinations of keys. There's a lot of menu bar items like the I think the bluetooth one Do I have it up on this computer? I don't know that I do But the bluetooth one and even the wi-fi one change dramatically like the option key brings in some things and um Option shift. I think changes even some of those. Yeah, it goes wi-fi settings versus network settings There's there's some things that happen. I think the bluetooth menu. I don't know if it still does I don't have it up on on this computer, but it used to add Like an option to reset the bluetooth system, but you had to have both keys held down. So Try those things out. No savior. You are my my favorite one is um, if you're doing a copy And then you go to your destination holding down the option key when you right click you yep Move item here option, which will move the item rather than paste a copy of it And that'll move it across volumes too, won't it? Oh, yeah Yeah, yeah That's right. Yep Yep Yeah, I mean the shortcut there is a shortcut for that's that's really what I use and which is command option Sure, I think it's command option v. Yeah instead of man v speaking of new features in our our macOS sonoma or ios whichever one you want Crampy writes and says my company has its own authenticator app that it uses the app doesn't have an apple watch option So the phone must be used to retrieve and use one-time passwords the app However, does have a phone widget available I've added the widget somewhere near the top of the widget tiles as part of a multi widget tile So that it appears each time I swipe right to get to widgets I've configured the swipe right to get to the widgets can be done on the phone's lock screen Which by the time the phone has unlocked with face ID And pressing on the widget now takes me straight to the authenticator app where I can pick my one-time Password for my relevant service. No need to swipe between home screen pages No need to swipe down and then search for the app by name Just tap the widget tile and it's right there in front of me This is This is a great tip. It also highlights the fact that there are so many of us that use um app centered aka the thing that makes it so that new apps aren't put on our home screens That it's easy to forget that you can put an app on your home screen and accomplish the same thing If there's an app you need to run you can even have a second home screen to the right, you know If you or if you swipe left like there can be another one you could put the app there Obviously if your app has a widget like crampy's company app does then that's a great way to get to it But if your app doesn't You can just put the app on your home screen to make it easy to get there and i'm saying this like I've had this thought Prior to this very moment No I'm having this as i'm sharing it with you because I have for one of our banks to do a wire transfer Which we do once or twice a week I have to run their little rsa app that you know shows me the one-time password And every darn time I search for it and the app changed names And now every time I type in the old name and nothing comes up If you're an app developer you can put these things like into the keywords for your app so that it comes up when people search for it They didn't just like marry it The the app itself says bonvoy on it and it took two years before searching for bonvoy Actually brought the app up. You had to remember no search for marry it. Okay, man Yeah, so but as i'm saying this out loud I'm realizing you know, I should just put the app on my on a second home screen so that I can just get there And not have to fight for it I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, I was so happy when our when our corporate single sign-on system added support for paschies. So now I just Touch id everything in now. It's like, oh, thank god I don't have to go to an authenticator app or I don't have to get a text code or whatever So with with pass keys life changing with pass keys used in that way There is no second factor, right? You once you authenticate with the past second factor is is your bio is you right? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I made my I made my it guy swap out my uh my keyboard for the one with the touch id I'm leaving the keyboard now Oh, I'm done with uv keys. I'm done with anything else. I'm only going to do This I got to start using pass keys more One password obviously supports them But the one place I don't and I I keep meaning to dig into this and I only think about it when I'm in a crunch situation I don't have time to think or while I'm doing a podcast and also don't have time to research Is apple apple.com. I don't think apple.com's pass key implementation Is compatible with one passwords Pass key implementation It threatens to be compatible every time I go to log in because I'll do it after we do this show because I have to like Go put the show into the apple podcast thing which requires me logging into my apple id and it's a whole thing I get the text on all of my devices and you know that Like like normal and of course it won't leave me logged in for more than you know 18 seconds and so I have to do it 14 times But you know, it's so I have a question then what am I doing wrong with pass keys and then I know we want to get Move along but that's fine. It seems to me that I want to use a pass key say to log into Best buy or yeah, that let's use that one. Yeah, and it comes up with the qr code Okay, now I've got to scan that with my phone and look at it with my face I thought I could do it with a fingerprint on my What am I doing wrong? How have I am I not putting the pass key in the right place? Shouldn't I be able to Shouldn't I be able to say use a pass key and the pass keys on my mac and I just use my fingerprint On the power button. Yes. I think you have to set it up per device though I don't think it sinks like you have to each device you have to set up Oh, okay with yes, okay. I'll do some more research on that because the way I've got it is I've got the qr code coming up Now I've got to scan it with my phone and then look at my phone and then hit yes continue and look at my phone again And it's like it's almost worse than just giving me a six-digit number I have rants related to this I want to go into real quickly because uh as it bothered anybody else and I'm sure there's a setting for this I have not dug into it but google is driving me nuts with the login now because The two factor they want to force you to use some piece of google tech Oh, so I set up qr codes or I set up one-time pass codes with One password and I want it to use authenticator every single time but now recently it's like Open the youtube app that you're logged into on your phone to log in It's like no I don't freaking want to go to some other google app on my phone To log into google Stop what's worse is when you like this time of year really about a month ago, right when you get your new iphone and Invariably you're out and about somewhere and it's like oh, I'm not logged into youtube or whatever So, okay fine. Let me log into youtube or whatever on your whatever google service you absolutely need and it's like, oh um Go ahead and and tell me the number that just appeared on the screen on your ipad That's oh 2,500 miles away from you right now. Yeah, that sounds like a great idea google I'm not there like it and I've had it I I have uh some android phones that sometimes I just test like for things that we do here and other You know like I use them sometimes and I have made the critical error of logging into my Main google account on those phones in the past And they are rarely with me when I'm anywhere and even if they're with me often the battery's dead because I haven't used it in three weeks And then it's like oh no We're gonna prefer your android device because that's a google device And so you need to tell us the code that's appearing on that and it's like no That device is dead. You haven't seen that device online in a month. Why do you want to go put something on that? What makes you think that's a good idea? Oh, yeah Yeah, so so people know because it's really easy to miss so the trick is Unfortunately, it's extra steps But you know on that dialogue that pops up that says log into youtube or open your youtube app There's usually a little tiny text link that says Use other method and then you can tap that and then say authenticator and then I don't do my one password thing But it's just annoying. I I'm sure there's I'm hoping that maybe not I I'm saying I'm sure there's a setting to change it like google would allow me to do that but probably not Probably I have to do it manually every day All right. 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Remember that's green chef dot com slash 60 mg g code 60 mg g and our thanks to green chef the number one meal kit for eating well for sponsoring this episode All right adam you want to take us to uh surf daddy Yeah, surf daddy has a question that I think a lot of people often have I get this one a lot So I'm looking for a way to automate arrange windows based on whether my m2 mech book 13 inch air is using the built-in display or in clamshell mode. I use a samsung m80c 32 inch 4k monitor both displays are set to more space Yeah, uh, there are there are lots of ways to do this. I Absolutely need this on especially on my podcasting rig, but really on on all of my computers Even if the displays don't change apps sometimes don't go where I Wanted them to be maybe I left them in the wrong spot or maybe I they just decided on their own So, uh, I use a piece of software called stay uh from uh cordless dog And it you you get your windows where you want them you tell stay Stay and it remembers and what's cool is to your question surf daddy It will remember different configurations for different monitors So if if you're on your laptop with an external monitor, you can have you can put things where you want and hit save and stay We'll remember that and then when you change, you know Disconnect your external monitor move things around hit save and it will save it for that configuration And you can have it auto switch when you plug in your external monitor be like, ah I know what to do and it'll go and like run things over to the side So, uh, yes, that's one in our discord where this question was asked Jeff answered and suggested the app called moom om from many tricks And that does a very similar thing It has a slightly different user experience and you might like that better I I I actually kind of like the way moom does it but I started with the stay and You know momentum is what it is, but you stayed I stayed. Yeah, I did what it said. Yeah Exactly. Do you do anything like this adam on your various different devices? Oh, I'm in I'm in the other fall and I just move windows around like a Like a proglade proglade. I you know, like oh man Like yeah, I you'd think I would you think I would Jeff also mentions that you there's probably a way to automate This was something on your mac 2 like I don't know work a workflow or an automator Who knows like people can do all kinds of amazing things But I seem to recall that yeah that David sparks uses something with keyboard maestro and and stay to And yeah, probably probably even his his stream deck because he's got like 117 buttons, which makes it that's harder than your keyboard Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah at some point. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah Yeah Yeper So, but yeah, those those it it is life changing. I when I realized I needed that functionality I that I just went in search of it. This was years ago And and it was like somebody must have I'm not the first one and that's when I found cordless dog And it was like whoo, I can get to my podcasting rig You know Five to 10 minutes later than I would normally have to every single time when I sit down and do a show Somewhere in there in better touch tool it has it has snap areas and I think you can automate the snap areas But I have not played with that, but that's my recollection that in better touch tool you can Oh, that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's one of those things that you know, Like like a clipboard manager. It's a fairly Uh, I don't want to say trivial because it's because it's not but it's a a single purpose It's a fairly, you know, like focused focused. Thanks. That's the word. That's what I'm having trouble doing today Uh, with you and so it's not unsurprising to find it in You know, various other apps. I don't know. I don't know what I'm saying anymore I think if someone figures it out, they could send us feedback at mackeekab.com and tell us how they did it Did you say feedback at mackeekab.com Pete? I think he did. He said feedback at mackeekab.com Well, I don't know about that, but sure try it. See what happens. What's the worst that could happen? I didn't say fee Don't say feedback. No, we don't want to encourage people to email that I don't know when that When that joke started it was a long time ago, but people are like I emailed feedback and I don't get anything and it was like All right, so we'll set up the forward Somebody stop me. Yeah. You can't you can't. No. No. All right. Oh goodness Uh We wanted me to take us to two short planks. Sure great name by the way Yeah, I agree He writes in and says I often want to send a message to my wife that she'll see the next time she looks at her phone But I don't want to interrupt her when she's in a work meeting driving a car or having a rare lion for example Uh, I made a fresh pot of coffee If you're awake In theory this should be solved by the do not disturb and other focused modes But that's controlled by the person to whom I'm sending the message Not me If I know the person I'm sending the message to is in an important meeting Is there a way to send that message that I know won't interrupt them? If not with apple's own message app Is there some sort of other special app that caters to this? Which goes back to my question. I've been wanting to do for years I want to send a message to my wife at three o'clock in the morning and have it Get to her, you know after she wakes up Yeah, you know that kind of thing so Yeah, I I think this is a little bit of a geek challenge I I don't have an answer for this That's like definitive adam like before we start into our speculation. Are you sitting there with the magic answer? Wait wait to share. I am unfortunately not. I'm I'm just thinking like I'm hoping an apple engineers are listening with at least messages And they can implement some sort of like whisper mode or something. Yeah that because I like I as soon as I read this and heard this I was like Yeah, same there are there are times where I delay sending a message or I hem and haul about like do I trust that this person Knows how to manage their do not disturb and does so actively Like you know, like there's that whole thing I I suppose um As we're sort of pondering. Is there an app out there to do that? Do we call it the mail app? like I like maybe but I mean even that might notify them right depending on how they have their notifications Well, yeah, right. Yeah, I've got a mother-in-law who lose her phone on mail notifications to this day thing The only thing I can think of here is you probably could write a shortcut Where you could plug in a time and like delay the send maybe So, um, this was discussed in our Discord here, and I'm looking to see if I can find it and I don't know that that I oh, yeah, yeah here it is um Listener Doug said I tried this with a quick and dirty shortcut that would be set a timer then Send a message and the the key is is the then right and unfortunately That doesn't happen. It sets the timer and and as soon as the timer is set not when the timer finishes It sends the message So there but there might be some like weight But I set your timer for you sport Command yeah in fact in fact Tony in this this thread here in discord says the weight command should do it But you need a user input that only allows predefined time So like your only choices would be 10 minutes half an hour an hour um So yeah, there might I mean you could set could you set an automation? I mean this starts to to become a fairly arduous task For each message, but you could potentially create an automation that at a certain time It runs this shortcut that then goes and sends someone a message Right adam Well, now you got my brain thinking because great. I want to go look You might be able to trigger automations when you change your own Do not disturb And I'm wondering if you could just set up like a a text, you know an automation where it writes to a text file What you want to say and you could even have multiple messages Yeah, and on wake you have that thing pick up that text file take those messages and just start sending them Oh Yeah, yeah, yeah I like I do like this. Yeah, I I I do like this Yeah, yeah play with it. I mean, I'm sure there's some magic built-in trick I'll put a link to the to the discord thread on this question So if you look in the show notes, it'll say it like, you know 38 minutes We started talking about two short planks. There's a link there that'll bring you right to the thread So you get to see the evolution of this and anything that's been added since we recorded the episode. So yeah Okay, what were you gonna say mine still I was just saying mine still my issues I wanted to work when I'm off the grid So my message needs to go to some other third-party server and sit there and then go to specific time Because I'm in an airplane, you know flying across country. Hey, I'll be home, you know When you wake up, I'll I'll be an hour out something like that We're on time or we're delayed or But yeah, yeah, yeah, but that but that doesn't mean that 95 percent of everybody else doesn't need to To do it the other way that right, right, you know, right an interesting Uh, somebody in that thread suggested the line app l i n e at line dot me And the the listener ben says line is one app that supports silent messages So this might be the answer if there's someone or a group of people with whom you would want to do this regularly You would have to set up the line app for for both of you But um, but yeah, okay, and that was line dot me you said line dot me and I've got that linked in the show notes now too Did we lose adam is adam? No, I'm here, but that my camera decided to die It says I need to unlock my phone, which I just did Because it's continuity. What happened adam across his eyes and he got stuck like that and now he's out of focus Yeah, adam's super adam's super blurry. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah And i'm not sure how to reset it without having to leave Let me try to stop camera. Yeah, okay Now it's still the same. No, that's weird. All right. Well, you will be mr Witness protection for the remainder of this episode for anybody who's watching on video Unless I did unlock my phone, maybe it'll magically come back at some point It might or we just got to get you on camo We'll get you a license for camo, which is the the much more controllable than continuity camera app so If you if you're using continuity camera a lot and you're running into issues Feel free to go get camo while we're I'm glad that we have you audibly because that's the most important thing Adam I want to jump to dom While we're while we're have while we have shortcuts on the brain. Okay we were talking about There was a thread about how Dom was using good notes to Fill out his shortcuts Uh, sorry to fill out his crossword puzzles. I'm I'm jumping the gun here and someone asked wait How do you get your crossword puzzles into? Good notes and he says oh, I have a little workflow that I made up I subscribe to my local paper the boston globe. I go to their site in safari I tap on the daily crossword so it comes up full screen. I tell it to print. I do a reverse pinch This of course is on his iphone Uh to get to the print preview to make the crossword image bigger Then you tap the share icon to share the resulting pdf to good notes He says it actually goes a lot faster than it takes to read. So, uh, it hit using using your Uh shortcuts and and making it into an action, right? Is that what they call that the the Share sheet action when you you can you can make a shortcut into that and I will tell you that is game changing We have earlier this year. We moved over to using notes for mac geek gab And I we've created this workflow that takes a printed document or the clipboard or whatever is shared into it Uh, it makes that a um You know, it puts it into a certain notebook for us and does some other things It asks us to name it and those sorts of things and it's great and I thought wait a minute I had this because it's in shortcuts. It's automatically synced to my iphone What if I make it capable or addressable as a share sheet action? And as soon as I did that now I can be on a web page and be like Oh, this would be cool to talk about on the show and all I have to do is hit share and boom It's there. I wish I could share anything because Sharing from an email would be great, but Instead we have to go through the pdf workflow thing. Although pete. I think we have a better a better option We've been sharing pdfs into notes for a long time, right when adam and I were going through this earlier this week Uh, I forget which one of us asked the obvious question But you know one of the problems with these pdfs is the text is really small And you hear us sometimes on the show like fumbling to try and get it big enough to read your question Yeah, well, we're about to send the email. That's the moment it like if we respond to you You know, we type the response and then we print it to a pdf that then with this workflow goes and shares to notes Uh, so we're at that moment Why not Command a command c it's now on the clipboard As actual text and images and all of the things that would be in an email But not yet a pdf And because our workflow is built to take either what is shared to it or if nothing shared to it The clipboard just invoked the workflow once you've copied the email to the clipboard and I'll tell you Believe it or not. It just works And so I started doing that this week Pete Yep Yep, sometimes I you know, sometimes teaching something often in fact teaching something you learn. Yeah, you learn better You learn far more teaching it. Absolutely far more. Yeah Yeah, sure. So so I I was glad when you joined us Uh, more regularly, you know as part of the team here adam anyway, but Having to go through the workflows that we have established and show them to you Of course gives us perfect opportunity to refine them. So this was what I loved about um About being in user groups and having that interaction When you would go to a meeting because very often I was very heavily involved as you might imagine and I would be Presenting or or being the person speaking or whatever And you know when you have years of experience you get set in your ways And you think this is the way you do this and that's what you're teaching people and inevitably I would get you know the thing you don't know like The person who hadn't thought about it so deeply or so much as you and and they would they would be the oh, that's really cool But I do this Oh Yeah, that's good, too That's better than mine. Sometimes I can do it in seven steps. I do it in two, but you can't You do you do you I I love it when when the question truly comes from a place of curiosity from them Like you you know, you're in that scenario where you are Presented as the expert, right? You're the expert in the room that there's the teacher and there's the students, right? And I I've always like that dynamic Does not Is not conducive to group Sharing the hive mind, right? Like that's what we and I'm really careful to to avoid it as much as we can hear because I love it when the question comes in like you explain your seven-step workflow and somebody raises their hand and they're like So i'm really curious Why do you do it this way like and they're they're not being snarky They're wonder they're like I know i'm missing something because that guy's smarter than me So I hear he's gonna like enlighten me as to why My way is not as good as his way and you know invariably It's like why don't you do this in two steps instead of seven? It's like Because I didn't meet you until today I just like that the student becomes the teacher absolutely Happens all the time. It's great. It's and it's what we do here. Like it's it's an it's absolutely what we do here Yeah, no, I love that part of this. All right Uh Speaking of that part of this you want to take us and read porthos john's shortcut thing while we're in the Shortcuts mode Porthos john I pulled up the wrong thing. Give me two seconds. That's okay. I I changed the order of the agenda ready Oh, yeah, there's there's two of them. Yes. Yes. Yes. All right. Oh, yeah, this one's great. Okay, so I've been playing around eight porthos john says I've been playing around with so many shortcuts with ios 17 And I just found a great automation flow for something I do a couple times a week When my wife and I decide to get take out I go and pick it up I like the kids to get everything set for when I get back So I developed the shortcut to make things to make use of the home pods in the house As well as texting all of them here. It's the automation steps In maps enter a street address for home Also in maps get driving directions from the current location to the street address from step one Then put in the text on the way with food set the table and feed the dog Please I'll be home at eta from step two Use the intercom feature on the home pod to Announce that to home text from step three Then send a message text from step three to Odd the list of all your family members now when I come through the garage door with the food I can unpack and go right to the table as an extra tip on step five if you click the little disclosure triangle And turn off feel where and won't show when run it won't ask you to confirm the text message every time you trigger the shortcut That's brilliant. Oh Yeah, yeah a little note note here too It says in shortcuts when you do the eta step two it needs permission to access location data I had trouble getting the permission pop up to come up the link wasn't working To fix I saved the shortcut and then force quit the shortcut and reopened it Which made the link to authorize the location services again Didn't know why that didn't happen for him. It should happen automatically but Yeah, yeah, yeah Huh That's I love these kinds of shortcuts and I I love sharing these on the show Some of you like this is a this is one that's fairly universally Like there's a universal appeal here. There's a there's enough of us that would do almost exactly this But I also love sharing it because thinking about it. You're like, well, wait a minute I don't necessarily need that but I hadn't ever thought about You know some yeah Yeah, I mean you have stuff like you know It just if you want someone to get notified you're on your way home or something like that You know and you can set geofence and geofencing is out on this But you could probably add that to this too and do all kinds of interesting things With you know when you get to a certain location, whether you're driving to work or something like that now I haven't Apple's just it's in the next version right where they're adding the Stuff where you can follow your family members and you can get notified when your family members go certain places and stuff Like I can't I think that's not in there yet the kid thing, right? Yeah, kids thing Yeah, so you can set up kind of that kind of stuff already using these kinds of shortcuts I mean very similar right plug in any address. It doesn't have to be your home address It can be different addresses for different things Yeah, um the intercom feature is also really cool and that's the one that I think a lot of people don't don't take advantage of The thing I was going to add here is that my family This would not work for they would hate this I love automations and I love intercom and I love all that sort of stuff They're not big fans. I have to tell you like when I intercom them from here it freaks them out because they're in the house and Siri starts talking Talking and I get I usually get an angry text message back because they'd rather I just text message them Right. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I understand. Oh, we um, you know, we we put a hot tub in last summer two summers ago or whatever and we have a The sonos rom speaker, which is a bluetooth speaker but it because it's sonos it also connects to wi-fi and does all the sonos things and It has the amazon a lady built into it And we have other echo units throughout the house because we kind of it's standard on standardized on that before apple released home pods And we will routinely use the you know, we will say a lady Announce and then, you know, it's like, oh, we're going to be in in 10 minutes They know start getting dinner ready or whatever and like I the the tone of annoyance that we get back from One of our kids as they're announcing back to us, of course, they don't live at home much anymore But when they're here, we love to use it with them because they're just like clearly so annoyed That we are using this feature and it's like, yeah, but it's really handy. Like, I don't know. We're outside. You're inside We're gonna we're gonna bother you like, yeah, you're outside. You don't want to be bothered We're inside. We don't want to be bothered My my message from that point would be more like, uh, bring me another beer Right. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You have kids, isn't it? Why didn't I think this is this is why we included you in the show, Adam? I don't I can't believe I never thought about that. There is something nice though I do like to get out of the hot tub to like get another drink or whatever because If you're out for a few minutes You get that sensation of getting back in and like that that that sort of the you know, the System shock of the heat and that's kind of nice, especially this time of year You get a little cold and you get back in it's like, oh, yeah, I warmed up again. Like so it's nice Uh, I want to take us to cool stuff found. I also want to do a little bit of uh, what I'll call show business here Um, it's all show business the first thing that I want to do is thank all of our upcoming thus far 2024 sponsors that have signed on board To help pay for uh our trip that pete and I are taking to ces in a couple of weeks here To cover the show for all of you to dig into things, you know When we go to these shows much like we do the rest of the time, but when we go to these shows We see it as our job to curate, right? It's we we we go in and get the overwhelming onslaught of all the new stuff And we sift out the few things that we think we would all care about here And that's what we share with you So we'll be out there covering things and doing all that and and we have some fantastic sponsors that have signed on to Uh to help us make that trip a reality thus far. There are three Collide at uh, you know k o l i d e dot com They have been a sponsor like a traditional sponsor here on and off Over the years and we are stoked to have them again with us their their whole technology for For managing all your apps and with okta and all that stuff. It's fantastic. I guess it's octa This is how it's pronounced. It really yeah And we'll talk more in depth about all of these as we get closer to ces carbon copy cloner is the next one on board We love carbon copy cloner here. Not only have they been a sponsor in the past But they are an app that that uh, I certainly use all the time and I think I think I think that's true of all three of us here It's critical Yeah, anybody who's ever listened to me for a long time and I'll bring it here back up back up back up I'm huge on it and carbon copy cloner is a massive part of that strategy Yeah, exactly and then uh, and then mac updater one of my favorite apps. I really like I I don't think you guys use it yet. I I highly recommend it. It just makes it's so nice to always have my apps up to date on my max So a mac updater is one of mine and I'm really thankful to have all three of these great Companies the great people and great services on board with us I am also extremely thankful to all of you really to all of you anybody listening very thankful and specifically thankful In this very moment specifically for all of you premium subscribers You can learn more about it at mac ekeb.com premium and I want to take a minute and thank all of you whose Subscriptions or or contributions have come in in the last since the last time we did this which has been I believe two episodes so We have ten dollar contributions from Jason in charlestown nick and mount clemens jeremiah and edge water cal in russelville donald in furlong christen charlie wood james and san antonio neil and west harford scott and bourbon a's mark in coopersburg abel and santa rosa frank and tunbridge timothy and west windsor frank and war he's thanks To all of you for your ten dollar contributions. We then have 25 dollar contributions From david and still water anthony in chicago larry and ervine haviar and jacksonville john and yipps alanti francis and putney And stacey in pine valley. Thanks to all of you for your 25 dollar contributions a 30 dollar contribution Thanks to andrew in north glenn a 50 dollar contribution Thanks to stanley in catonsville and a hundred dollar contribution Thanks to sandra in maramax you You already know this but you all rock and really you all rock the premium program is voluntary Uh, we are ever so appreciative of those of you who can and wish to Participate in it because it is a huge part of what it What it takes to allow us to do all of this sponsors and you And really everything and listening to the show and contributing your questions it's a it's it's a team effort here and we are We are thankful and fortunate ever so fortunate to be able to do this and we take that really seriously I know we joke around a lot in the episodes and we have some fun together But the goal is to learn those five new things and and we're we're pretty serious about that. So thanks to you for that. Yeah All right, shall we uh, shall we jump to cool stuff found and perhaps if i'm lucky I get to share a not cool stuff found today too. It's only only It is not cool, but we'll start with the cool ones. Uh ed Tells us about this new thing he found called Fix which is both an app and a website The website has user manuals and repair videos and all of that stuff the app You get to create your own list of things and it's not just computers In fact, the focus is not computers It is all of your appliances your dishwashers your stove your air conditioners. We talk about When you get a new appliance go and get the user manual today when the manufacturer still has it available Because when you actually need it in five years that particular model has been discontinued and the user manual is like Split up into 14 different pdfs across the internet and good luck. Well fix aims to fix that So thank you for for sharing this ed He says I'd ask you set up an account and then the app is free And they seem to make money from people ordering repair parts from them for their appliances, which also Is a great resource to have because when you need that new drawer for your refrigerator You know that new widget for your dishwasher. It's nice to know. Yeah This is the part that goes on that picture on the manual. Great. I think I can fix this So thank you for that. Nice. I know it's cool. It is cool Right. Well, I've been using iFixit for this for years. So it's nice to have another resource like this Exactly. Because not everything is there, you know, yes, so between the two hopefully you've got everything covered That's exactly right. That's that was exactly my feeling I have at least four folders on my computer with manuals and It's such it at least. Yeah Yeah, because you know, oh, I need to store that manual. Let me let me make a folder for that. Oh, wait Where is it? Yeah, now I need to go through and prune that folder because we just redid our kitchen which means The old cooktop the old refrigerator that yeah, exactly. Yeah, I have a drawer in my house That's the manual drawer like every manual goes in and it's You know back like no one no one could see on the video, but it's like basically the size of my window Oh, yeah, yeah, we had that drawer and then invariably there would be the one thing that we actually needed that You know, right? It's not you didn't find Certainly not on the first three passes through this because it's not organized in any sensible way No, I just throw it in there every time I buy something new. Oh, there's the manual Yeah, and you wedge it in there because now it's like over stuff. That's right. Yep Yeah, and then you break the drawer Then you need to find the manual for the chest of drawers to figure out how to fix that and where to get the Parts and yeah, you got the dishwasher manual for the dishwasher that broke Ten years ago. Exactly Right. It's like, oh, I found the oh no, not this and you burn it in effigy and it's all the thing Yep, the neighbors have to come out. It's that's not good um Forible uncle jamey tells us about it about this site. He came across he said it lets you create your own podcast At least in terms of a subscribed to podcast by referencing any publicly available audio files It seems especially useful for the many audio files available from archive.org There are hundreds of pre-made podcast feeds there at forible.co.uk That someone at some point found interesting and published the site is very low friction and it's free. Yeah, you can if there's an If there's something some collection at archive.org that you want to listen to as a podcast You just feed it to forible and it will it will make the the feed for you. So I I called it for a bull. It's not it's for bull f o u r b l e So I was gonna say that that that's better because The other Version could be misconstrued. It almost sounded like horrible. Yeah, it's not horrible. It's not horrible. It's great for bull For bull. There's no middle There's no middle middle. Um, I can't even come up at the words anymore. Pete. I really haven't had enough sleep I don't even know Yeah, I hear you. I don't know syllable. It's syllable. That's the word. I was trying to think of Pete syllable Celebs No, no, no, we can hold it on the rails for just a few more minutes. Pete. Okay. You want to take us to hit paw I do. Yeah, so I have as many of you know I have another show that I do and one of the requirements for my guests is that they send me photos of the airplane They were they they were fluing they they flew or they are flying or Various aviation photos because I put them up on the website and yep in conjunction with Well, the gent we had on recently sent me some amazing photos, but The quality of the blurry, you know, yeah, there's I wonder if there's any way Well hit paw has an ai photo enhancer now it ain't cheap. Uh, I think it was I think it's like 70 90 year I went ahead and bit the bullet and they had it on sale from 149 to 120 So 20 off and but that's a permanent ownership own it forever including all the free upgrades But man you give it something to work with it does an amazing job of clearing up blurry photos Of fixing the color And as I was telling you pre-show I had a great aunt whom I never met who died in the 1920s Did some modeling and some old black and white photos of her that have gotten very yellow over the years and this thing did the scratch fixing Took the blur out and put nice colors in and I was like, oh my goodness This is you know, it's like the photo was taken in the probably in the 80s not not in the 20s. So So yeah hit hit paw ai photo enhancer and they also they have uh, some other products too, but video Automatic video converter that kind of stuff, which I use handbrake for but that's a whole separate that's a whole different thing Yeah, I I I finally found if you just go to hit paw.com It's really difficult to well, I found it really difficult in my sleep deprived state to find the ai photo editor But I got there and now the link that's in the show notes for all of you. It will bring you directly there Yeah, that's pretty cool. Yeah, I've had some real fun with it just going through my photos library and looking at some old ones That they went, oh, you know, I wonder if what it'll do with this and some it's really disappointing I mean it screws up their fate like a group photo that was taken in 1981 It looks clear Until you zoom in on it and then you're like, oh Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's not good. You know, yeah, but uh, but another one that was taken in 1984 was absolutely gorgeous It did a really nice job amazing of clearing everything up and yeah I was really impressed if if you have a need for photo manipulation and you've got old photos that you wanted Try and enhance and I believe There's some free trial associated with it. It looks like a water market or something like that in there But to see if it's going to help you And they even have they have another one that does we talked about it previously about removing watermarks Oh, that's right. That's ah, that's why this sounds familiar, right? I remember this now They also I have to share because it's clearly the most important thing on their website. There's a 30 off Christmas coupon Pete Yes, um, I like that was part of the issue is is I You can hide the Christmas coupon and then a reminder about the Christmas coupon comes up and when you hide that the Christmas coupon comes back up It's terrible web web design because I was trying to get to a menu that was behind One of these elements Christmas coupon. Yeah. Oh, yeah, it's really nice But we want you to save money. I don't want to I don't I just I want to get to the thing that I can save money on No, no save money first. Well well uh as annoying as that is I Mentioned a few weeks ago That I thought there was something going on with my system with uh monterey Or safari where I was running out of memory And it got bad and I I I asked about it on the show like is anybody else experiencing this and the good news was Any any many of you wrote in and said no, it's been fine Like I'm not seeing any like remarkable difference between say ventura And uh, sonoma. I said did I say Monterey? I meant sonoma Uh, and so I was like, okay, so this is a me thing got it Well, still it's a me thing and it really is only on one of my computers It's my m1 mini in the office, which is my only computer with 16 gigs of ram I would buy every computer with 16 gigs of ram But I had to buy two computers very quickly over the summer when I had that lightning strike And so I now have computers with my laptop has 24 gigs of ram because that was the one that was available And this one in the studio has 32 gigs of ram because that was the one that was available That's not a problem mind you, but it did make troubleshooting Amongst my ecosystem a little more difficult and it made me think gosh, do you really need more than 16 gigs to like effectively run Sonoma at the same time I migrated from using mail as my primary mail client to thunderbird as my primary mail client I was like, okay, maybe it's a thunderbird thing But then again, I'm using thunderbird on all my other max and it's not Causing my and it might the symptoms were that my system would just slow to a crawl and I for some reason Sorted that well if I quit safari and relaunch it it makes it better But often only for a very short period of time like there were there were days where I had to quit safari More frequently than once an hour Just to get things like to keep things moving and to keep my system from being sluggish and so I was like, okay, maybe I need to nuke and pave Maybe is it time as ridiculous as this is going to sound is it time to replace my m1 mini with something newer? Like I I couldn't I almost bit the bullet last week like I like out of frustration It was like I need this computer to be to work like I would be sitting there alone in my office Yelling to no one can I use my computer now or do you need to use it? You know yelling at my computer and uh And then finally It dawned on me. I should try I should start troubleshooting this right and so it's like well, what can I do? Do I have some like virus kind of thing? So I ran Um, the answer is yes. I did have some kind of virus malware bites didn't find it Uh, because it's not something that we would typically call a virus. In fact, it's a piece of software that came from one of our sponsors I'll get there. Um Not a current sponsor. Thank goodness Uh, so I I dug around and I'm like, okay Well malware bites isn't finding anything that's like known to be nefarious But maybe You know extensions can get in the way and so I started looking at my extensions I have one password and like oh, I really don't want to have to live without that But okay, like, you know turn that off that didn't fix it. So I started turning things off The paypal honey extension Uh was one of them and when I turned that off man Everything changed Like I knew within an hour that this was Certain to be the fix to my problem or the cause of my problem depending on how you want to look at it And and now that it's been, you know, many days almost a week since I've turned this off I I can say with certainty that that this Absolutely was the problem. In fact, I turned it back on and the problems all came back um I guess I you know paypal honey is an extension that looks at the When you're shopping for things it will and it's very clever about the way it does it I really like the way it does it you get to the checkout page and it will offer to Try all the coupons that it knows about to find you the best deal and it scans the page It finds where to put the coupon code in it finds the price that like the grand sum total price that you're already paying And then it just iterates through it puts a coupon code in it says apply coupon sees what it is Goes through all of its coupons and then says here's the best deal. We found for you And sometimes it's you know the best the deal that you had found and some other times many times it's something else and I suppose that it's integration with the dom the document object model and all the javascript on the pages and maybe because I always have like I have pinned tabs for google docs and Like sonology drive documents that are very Sort of resource heavy on their own. Maybe it's always paying attention to these I think you can I know you can go in and tell safari which pages to or not to allow extensions to see So I could go in and like, you know Granulally manage it. But really what I do is I just leave it off Um 99 of the time and then turn it on when I'm like checking out somewhere I don't need PayPal or honey or anybody else Examining the dom of every document that I'm in in google docs or any other web page. I mean like I'm sure they're collecting that data too I I would if I were I mean, I wouldn't if I were them But that's because I'm not in that business and there's a reason I'm not in that business. So anyway, honey killer us of Clients and servers. I have a great story. Have you been have you been there before? Yeah, so I my day job I work for a company and we build e-commerce websites and So we're dealing with coupon codes and coupon form inputs and baskets and all that stuff all the time, right? And we had one client's site that kept just cratering And we were like, what the hell is going on? There's nothing in our code. We're like, look at around blah, blah, blah Come to find out The way Couponing systems work in this particular customer had very complex couponing rules so Things like a lot of exclusions a lot of different codes a lot of it's and they had a pretty large database for all of their Things and so the problem is is that what honey does is it basically D-dosses your coupon input form like when when you're running that thing. It's basically Just slamming through every coupon it can find that Has ever been valid for that site, right? Yeah, some massive data all of them Yeah, and then it has to find you like you said it has to find the best discount out of the coupons that do work So it's trying it's trying it's brute force is the way it doesn't right forcing every coupon Yeah, I mean it's clever don't get me wrong But yeah in this case on the back end they had so many complex exclusion rules that the database hits to check each coupon We're heavier. I mean we figured it out, but it was like oh this thing is just like so we had to build some Workgrounds and stuff for not just honey for any of these coupes. There's a lot of these coupon things Yeah, yeah, they're not the only one that does more prevalent This became a new problem, but we were scratching our heads for a long time It's like holy crud And when they were looking at what we what these things were doing these plugins were doing when they were actually on the basket page It's just like a brute force Attack and then so we didn't want to the immediate thought was well, we'll put in, you know We already had anti brute force things in there, right things to slow it down or whatever But you don't want to do that because you don't want to break that customer experience You want them to use the coupon so right interesting dilemma to have to try to solve Holy crud. So same thing. They overwhelmed our server just the same way it was overwhelming your client Yeah, but it wasn't like Like I get yes, this all makes sense that the thing is it was overwhelming my web browser When I had no shopping websites open at all It but it's just seeing everything and I would assume your suspicions are correct that it's just constantly checking the DOM for certain you know Key IDs or something like that. Maybe I don't I feel like it it A better way to code that would be to first look at the url And compare that against the database that you know, honey uses and say Do we have any coupons for this url? And if the answer is no Stop Like that's it. There's gonna be a short list Relative to the number of websites that exist out there. There's going to be a short list of of websites that that Honey is going to have coupons for so. Why would it even bother? Like if it's hunting for the coupon input on on the page or whatever, but you're right Yeah, like why aren't we checking to see is this an e-commerce website first? Well, or or is honey and and this is me in my tinfoil hat and it's so you know, I'm sorry, but or is Couponing and that and an affiliate stuff only one of honey's revenue streams and another one maybe is You know data mining. I don't know like like they definitely had the ability and did Know everywhere that I visited for a very long time You know if I were I think if I were going to use honey more and I probably will I will Put it in whatever, you know block all and allow only These very specific sites. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, probably a good strategy Yeah, and and that's true now, you know, that's not just honey that like you said, there's tons of apps like this There's coupon. What's the other one coupon bird? So I don't know can anywhere. We're all Yeah, coupon birds is another one that that I've used successfully and like but um, yeah Is another one I retell me now. I think they have a plug in that you think that'll fill in coupons I mean, it's super handy to to have something instead of having to like, you know Do it the old way which is like visit retell me not and copy and paste and oh no, that didn't work Okay, copy and paste note that didn't work. I mean, it's annoying. It's nice to have a computer do the automation of that however However, I do uh before we I think we've we've exhausted our time with my with my little rant and hopefully valuable things before that I do want to share one thing For and I'll put a link for this in the appropriate section but rod in our discord chat mentions a service called sly dial Which he uses for delivering voice messages silently So back to our discussion about, you know, how to how to tell people about this sly dial It's not text. It's voice But um, you know, maybe ring less voicemail messaging app is what they call it. So another another option line Seems to be the app that'll do that for text messaging sly dial for For voice, but yeah, nice to be able to leave people a message and have them check it on on their time Yeah, yeah Yeah, thanks for hanging out with us everybody. Thanks for thanks for bearing with us. I think we did okay today p Thanks. Thankfully you were here. It's getting better. It's getting better. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks. We appreciate that Um, aside from our brief stint with our unknown co-host Yeah, that's right. Adam blurred out as Adam blurred out I think what happened is I got a text from my wife and I didn't have dnd on so I just got to remember to set dnd when I start Show yeah, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I have a do you use keyboard maestro adam I do not but I'm the app between the last show in this show. I think you're gonna convince me so yeah, so I have a A keyboard maestro macro that I run that launches all the things that I need for every podcast which is super handy And then it runs my uh, it it turns on my focus mode For podcasting which is basically do not disturb other than you guys like right your messages can get through and and that's basically it so Cool, uh, but it's nice yet. Someone got through to me. I'm really curious how that happened. Oh Huh with a phone call or a like text message text message Huh, does it offer everybody the ability to like break through or only like the ip people? I don't remember how that feature works. Oh, I don't know That's a good question. Yeah, it was a text. So I know a phone call you if you call no No, like if I were to text you in dnd when you're in do not disturb mode Oh, they can go notify anyway correct Yeah, correct. So maybe that's what happened Yeah, that's what at least explain it Maybe best to just assume that that's what happened because if it's not Then you've got a whole mystery that you're going to be obsessing about broken. Yes. Yeah, you don't need that in your life Thank you folks. This has been uh a blast Have a uh, have a great week. Thanks to our sponsors green chef dot com slash I need to make sure I get the code right 6 0 m g g those meals are yummy. It's fun stuff Thanks to cash fly for for providing all the bandwidth to get the show from us to you Thanks to all of you Visit mackey cub dot com sign up for the newsletter. So you get the show notes in your inbox Pete Do you know, uh Do you know how to share any advice in japanese? I'm putting you on the spot here I I know I don't know. Okay I could but that being said we'd be canceled. So i'm not gonna Hahaha, you haven't memorized the correct advice is what i'm saying. Oh, there it is Thanks for hanging out with us folks. See you next time