We'll start with some follow up. We'll get into your trip, I think maybe a little bit too. We'll start with some follow up. Because several months ago I talked about a hardware mute switch that I had purchased because there was no mute on the H6 that I was using. And I bought this mute switch. I've owned one previously and I was miffed because I was like, oh, they changed the model or did something weird because now in order to mute. Well, in order to unmute I have to depress the button. So let me back up for people who don't remember that episode or whatever. So it's just a box with a female XLR and a male xlr. And what you do is you run the male XLR that's coming from your microphone into the female XLR of the little box and then you run a female XLR to the male XLR on your audio interface and that gives you an inline mute switch. What I didn't like when I got this one is to unmute and it just has a one button on it on the top. And you press the button. Either the button is depressed or you press it down and it locks in place. And then it's, you know, in that mode. What I didn't like is I would have to depress the button. So press it down in order to unmute, which was irritating because what I wanted to mostly have the button for was if I was about to cough or something like that while I was on a live mic, I get partial and then let it back up. And you wouldn't hear a pop or anything like that.
Yep.
Oh, what I said when I was muted was partially depressing. You wouldn't hear me call. So sitting here the other night, late the other night, and I was doing some thinking and I was researching a few things, I was jotting down some notes and I jotted down some notes about some stuff with Mike and I was like, oh, I could send Mike this mute switch because for him having it be muted and then doing a kind of half press, not locking the button down, it's kind of a half press to say something and then letting it go back into mute might be helpful in us trying to figure out building out this low cost talkback system. I was coming up with some ideas that we could, that you could possibly use for making that work. I was like, oh, well, I'm going to send Mike my mute switch. I need to go find one because I'm going to eventually get rid of the vocaster one that Mike was, I'm going to say, kind enough to send me.
Because it really means it was on my desk and I needed it.
Off the desk because it's going to eventually die. It does seem to be kind of back a little bit more than it was for you. Like, I haven't been having, like, that audio hiss that you were getting as much. It does appear sometimes there's a crackle when you adjust. Adjust the volume. Sometimes you press the mute button, and it doesn't mute. Sometimes you press the auto gain button, and it doesn't do the auto gain. So it's kind of hanging on, but not forever. I was like, eventually, I'm going to get rid of this. So let me go research some mute switches and figure out which one does the thing that I want it to do, which is when the button is up or not in the locked position. I'm unmuted so I can do that little half press if I need to cough. Because generally I think if I press it all the way in, you're going to hear a pop. All right, so tell me if you hear a pop. Cause I didn't test this since I did it.
No.
Did you hear a pop at all? No.
No.
Oh, okay. Well, maybe Zone crushed it. Anyway, so I was on one of our favorite sites to go to for audio gear, which is Sweetwater. Oh, well, this was actually Sweetwater.
Okay.
I don't know why I was on Sweetwater. Oh, I was looking at something else that I shouldn't have bought that I bought. But anyway, we'll come back to that at a later date. No, you won't talk about it right now. But anyway, I wanted it. And I figured, hey, this might actually be my last chance to get this thing. So anyway, doing some research on mute switches, I had quite a few, including ones from the company that I originally. Well, not. I bought this one on Amazon that's on my desk, but, you know, from the same manufacturer, and they had a couple of different models. I'm like, oh, I bet I bought this slightly wrong model. And what I thought I was going to have to do to fix this, which is why I was going to send it to Mike. Going back to that original, I'm gonna say bitch session about it when I got it, is I thought I was gonna have to rewire it. Like, take it. Well, I wasn't gonna do it, like, find somebody that could, like, rewire it. So it changed the behavior. I was like, that seems extra complicated. Well, somewhere in the reading of this, somebody mentioned that, oh, Well, I sent this one back because it behaves this way. And they said that there was a switch to change the mode. And I couldn't find a switch. I was like, there's this little hole, like, in the side of this thing that I just thought was just like a hole. I don't know why you put holes in things. I mean, there's little holes on the bottom of it, too. Maybe there's just vents in case it gets hot. I don't know. What do I know? It's like, huh, let me get this little screwdriver, see if I can flick this switch. And there's an actual switch in there. There's an actual switch in there. And now it does what I wanted to do. So the upside for me is I didn't have to buy anything new. The downside is not sitting at the bike.
That's okay. I still got a mute button right here on my handy dandy mixer that I'm going to give to the garbage. No, I'm really not. But good, good. So. So it actually does what you wanted it to do. You just didn't read the manual or ask Chat GPT, right?
Well, so I kind of asked chatgpt, but to be fair, I asked a leading question, which is how do I rewire this to do blah, blah, blah? And I gave it the model and all of that. But what it didn't do, and admittedly this is months ago, so well before where we are right now today with GPT and its capabilities, it did not point out to me, as it probably would today, which maybe I should go type that into a prompt and see what it does. I'll do it when I let Mike talk for a while and see what it says. But what it shouldn't, hey, there's actually a toggle switch on that model that you should just be able to reach in there with like a pin or a little screwdriver or something. Just like flip this toggle switch and then it'll change of behavior. But, yeah, I did not read the manual. I assumed because I was buying the exact same model that I had before, that that's how it was going to work. But occasionally, what happens with companies, and this is something to be aware of, sometimes they rev, like they do revisions of a product without really changing the model number. Or if they do change it, it's so subtle that, like, you're not going to remember. It's not like a whole version change. It's not like, oh, this is version 12. Like, no, this is the rolls Ms. 11, blah bl. Okay, well, yeah, that's the one I bought. All right, let me get that. So I just thought it was one of those situations like, oh, they, they made a subtle change maybe because the industry was like, hey, I actually use this for talk back. And I don't really want to be muted most of unmuted most of the time or whatever the case was anyway. But yeah, I figured out that it worked just because somebody's random comment on why they sent back the one that they had, probably because they didn't figure out that there was a little switch inside of a hole that they could flick. So cool. I get to keep my mute. Also, I was thinking about, and the way that I even got here, Mike, is because I was thinking about, huh, If I clean off my desk, I would have enough room to put the MKT back up here because obviously, I mean, you know, obviously I have not sold it. It's in a box downstairs in the house. So I was like, oh, I could put the, the MTK, the sound. What is. What is it?
Soundcraft Signature 12.
There we go. There we go. Yep. I could put the Soundcraft back up here because, oh, it, it does have the 12 in, 12 out over USB to the Mac. And Zoom has, you know, handily added this feature, which is where I find myself at most times now, where I need to be able to send a specific channel or channels to the app. So it's like, oh, this could be cool. I could put that back on there. That gives me a mute button. It's like, yeah, I should go research. Mute button. I'm not sure I want to put that MTK back on here because it still came in low over usb and that's not a fixable thing without some finessing of loopback.
Yeah.
But it did occur to me in this conversation, that's how I got to some stuff for you. And actually thinking about the whole talkback thing, which is how you almost got a mute switch in this box that I haven't shipped off yet, but I'll get there. I just hadn't made it to the mail place. It's like, oh, crap, I opened Mike's box, but he'll get something new. But I was thinking about, I was like, huh. I bet the reason that we have the ability to now select channels in Zoom from the audio device if the device exposes said channels to the Mac is because of them purchasing Lemonar and Zoom ISO and Zoom shortcuts or Zoom cuts, whatever they call it.
So I haven't Watched it yet. But Office Space has a On Friday's episode that they posted, they interview a couple of guys from Zoom about upcoming features to Zoom. And apparently there's a lot to do with live events in there. So I'm gonna have to go check that out. Cause that's something that interests me on Friday. On Friday, I was having my own fight with Zoom and my Mackie 12 Pro FX V3, and I was about to throw everything in the garbage. And it was very. It was very overwhelming and frustrating in the heat of the moment. And I honestly still don't know what the issue is. I have some suspicions and I have some solutions for what we can do next time, but let's just say Friday did not go as well as I wanted it to. And I'll give you my hack together solution that did kind of work. And I got to buy new microphones, so that's fun. So the problem to be solved was that on Friday I was doing a board meeting for the State of Oregon Audio for a board meeting. And I'm on the board, so had to be there for that as well. And longtime listeners know that I was in the same venue in 2022 doing convention. And I'll preface this by saying audio this year was better, though it's kind of ironic. So in 2022, we ended up using the MacBook Air microphone to get audio from in person. This is for our convention, specifically to Zoom. And then we. Damasi's mute button didn't work.
I couldn't reach it. I was trying to reach it and I had my head on the keyboard. I couldn't quite reach it before I sneeze.
We were trying to get audio from in person to Zoom and we used the MacBook Air microphone. And then I plugged an RCA cable because I forgot this till we got there on Friday. Their audio inputs is a dual RCA input on the wall and that's called wall plate one. So we ran a Y cable from dual RCA males to an 8th inch male from the MacBook Air headphone jack into their system. And people on Zoom were heard in person. But on Zoom, it was not the most pleasant audio experience this year. It was totally opposite. In person, audio could be heard on Zoom crystal clear. Aside from one of my microphones that did. I do have to remind myself I only spent $120 on this dual wireless microphone setup. And so yeah, I should probably update it anyways. Per people on Zoom were able to hear in the room just fine. But for some reason Zoom would never come out of the Vocaster, because I was sending audio out of the Vocaster into the. Into the Mackie board and then sending that audio from the Mackie board to the overheads. Now, when I got home, I think I solved the problem and know why it didn't work when I was resetting everything up. And that comes to the fact that I had cables plugged in opposite than the way they should have been plugged in. So I think that's going to solve the problem, But I'm also going to do some more experimentation. And in order for me, for people to hear Zoom through the overhead speakers, this is a little bit of piano playing. I would hold the Gemini wireless microphone to the bottom of my iPhone and then I would mute the channel that had Carrie's microphone on it. Remind me to come back to that if I don't. I would mute that channel, and then I would make sure that the Zoom audio channel was muted as well, so that way it didn't loop back into Zoom. So I was doing my own personal mixed minus. And you know what? Surprisingly, the Gemini picked up audio in person over the phone and sent that over the in house speakers pretty darn well. But that was my. That was my not so good Friday evening. And I kind of wanted to talk to. Masi had messaged me and asked if I had some topics to talk about. Well, he said he gave me an idea of something to talk about that he wanted to chat about. But I was thinking, man, I got my own topic. And that is not beating yourself up, because things don't go the way they should. And I'm going to be fully transparent and say all after. I mean, we went to Outback Steakhouse afterwards with a couple of board members and had a pretty good steak and, you know, was. Was having a decent time. But the entire time, in the back of my mind, both that night and then I had some other tech issues on. On Saturday. But that night and Saturday, I was beating myself up because I'm like, you know, you should have been able to walk into that venue, plug in what you needed to plug in, and make things work the way that they should. And Mallory likes to tell people that there are organizations that will fly Michael across the country to help with their audio, because that's happened. And, you know, it's pretty cool that he has that opportunity. But when. Oh, that's just inserting. I just got a message that says Zoom has new window.
Oh, that happens from time to time. It's probably.
But when. When I go to what really Honestly, should be an easy gig. And I. And I. I take all of the equipment, and I have all the control over who does what, when, and where. And things don't go well. I tend to beat myself up over that. And that's something that you kind of shouldn't be doing. But we all do it when things go like that. So that's my thing. And now I'm considering. I know Damasi and I talked about renting speakers, but my problem with renting speakers is then that adds another level of uncertainty because I don't have control over who hit what switch when on those speakers. And so if you rent speakers, that adds a level of uncertainty to the mix. And honestly, I started looking at Z Sounds and refurbished speakers, and I might end up with some speakers of my own and then a little cart that I can just throw my gear in and say, all right, we tested at home. Everything's working. We're going to go and we're literally just plugging power in, and everything's going to work because it's. It's already set up, all the cables are connected, and everything is my potential new plan. We'll see. But that was my Friday, so let's.
And I agree with you, and I want to come back to that for a second because I have some relevant experience recently, which I have talked about a little bit, but just following up on that, but I'm more curious because on me, how did you have everything hooked up? And then what did you discover when you got home? Which is what happens. You get home, you're like, oh, crap. I know what the problem was. I did. Blah, blah, blah.
I had it set up exactly the same here, except I believe so right now I have the group one coming out of the board into the vocaster, and I have nothing plugged into master.
Okay?
So I had the house audio plugged into master, if I recall, right? And I. I was getting some weird feedback with the master button pressed on the board for certain channels. So I swapped cables around. And it's. It's one of those. You. You try 10 different things because you're like, this should work. This should work. Why is this not working? And so I think that may have been the issue is I think I probably actually, now that. I think, like, now that I'm talking about it a little bit more, I think I at one point had the house audio plugged into groups. Group one, which should have worked, but then when I plugged cables in to get audio into Zoom, because here's how it started. So we walked into the room at 4:30. Session starts at 6. Should have been plenty of time to get set up. And that's another thing, is I'm going to probably add on another half hour, get there two, two and a half hours before the event, because then if I get everything set up, I can go do other things and stuff like that. But the very first thing was Mallory couldn't hear me on Zoom in person. So I'm troubleshooting that issue to say, why aren't people hearing people in person? Or Mallory couldn't hear me on Zoom while I was in person. I'm like, why can't people hear me? And that was my first troubleshooting. Once I got that figured out, took about a half hour or so. Then we started trying to figure out why we couldn't hear Zoom. And of course, five people start walking in and then want to talk at the same time. And that's another reason why I'm going to add another half hour to an hour to my setup time. Because, yeah, people like to talk, which. Which isn't a problem. Unless you're trying to figure something out.
Unless you're trying to figure something out. Yeah. So see, this is where you need to strategically deploy the Mallory. If Mallory is as much like me as I think she is, which is she. Except she's probably a little bit more polite. So she will politely get people to kind of stop talking or move over that way with your conversation. So you're not right over here on top of me with all your crap.
Yeah, yeah.
Now, what I would have done in this situation is strategically deploy the tia because I would have told her they need to shut the F up. Right. And, like, but you go figure out how to tell them that I have.
A conversation with them or something, because I got to figure this out and.
Move it that way, please. Because I can't hear. And when I do hear, I'm just hearing them, which isn't helping.
So here was my other solution that I was going to do to solve the problem. And I'm like, okay. So it was 5:55. And I'm like, we're going in five minutes. Either way, we got to figure this out. People on Zoom can hear us. We just can't hear them. The worst part about it is we had a presenter on Zoom, so that was fun. Anyways, so my solution was I'm going to unplug the or. I have another dual quarter inch to eighth inch cable. I'm going to plug one end of this 8th inch cable into the headphone jack on the MacBook. And then I'm going to run that into the mixer and run that audio out of the main so that way it goes to the overhead speakers. Right. Following me there. That makes sense. Yep. The problem is, and this is why I'm not sure if I should be blaming Zoom or what, but Zoom would not let me pick that out, but it would let me pick the MacBook speakers, but it wouldn't let me pick the MacBook headphones. And I picked the MacBook speakers. And Zoom came out of the MacBook speakers, but it wouldn't let me pick the headphone jack.
So it was really weird. Could you see the headphone jack? And it was just like dimmed out or did it not show up at all?
It just didn't show up. I did not leave the meeting and come back.
Wonder if you have a. No, I wonder if you have a back cable.
So it's funny you bring that up because we tried two different cables. We did not try my Hotfix with the second cable, but we did try it with the first cable. So that could be. I'm using the first cable now because you know how on these quarter inch cables at the end, it's, it's not exposing wire, but the connectors are further away than from the, from the COVID of the wire than they normally are. And that's the case with this one right now. But when I got home, I plugged in the Windows laptop that I have for work. Well, I cleaned off my desk before we left, and when I got home, I put it on my desk and plugged that into the mixer and I'm running that into channel 3 4. And that cable is working just fine out of the headphone jack. So there could be some, some weird things going on. I will say I was going to come back to this, though. Thank you to the organization that provided me the DJI Wireless 2 Go microphone set. Because I clipped one of those lapel mics to Carrie and then we ran audio out of the receiver into the board and that audio actually came out and sounded pretty darn good. So that was awesome. And she was able to work hands free. So.
Excellent, excellent. I forgot you had those when I was sitting here mapping out ideas for doing a talkback situation. So that, that is awesome, because that, that is something I absolutely would have included in deployment. There is clipping that mic too, because we talked about that at some point, like clipping a wireless mic to people who are always going to have to speak. So you don't have to worry about them being too close to the mic or whatever, or passing a mic back and forth because that person always is going to have to speak. So they should just be miked up.
Yep. And apparently the receiver will let us change the gain of each of the microphones on there. That part's not accessible, but Mallory was reading some of the menu options to me and it lets us change the output levels and stuff like that so it looks pretty powerful. And I'm going to throw that in my gear bag. So I always have some wireless mics with me for sure.
Yeah. And good thing you got those now because they're going to go about 245% or something this week.
Next week it'll be more or less, who knows?
Or not at all. Yeah. The way, though. So I guess I'm not getting any because I'm not going to buy them right now because they're not that important. And yeah, by the time I will want to buy them, they be like, yeah, I'm not paying that much for them. They're already, you know, roughly about 300 bucks, I think. Yeah, there'll be six by the time, you know, right. This is done. It's like, I don't think they're that good. I mean, at that point I should just start looking at DPA or something. For sure. Well, cool. So, yeah, going back to the whole, don't beat yourself up, like, I'm the exact same way. Like something does not go as planned. Like I'm constantly. And even if stuff does kind of work and like, there's not a problem, I'm still reviewing in my mind after the fact, like, oh, what could I have done differently? Or in this situation, I should have done this or, or I should have did it this way or, you know, things like that. And I think that's sort of a natural behavior for a lot of people. Some people maybe not so much. Maybe that's how you get to be president. You don't. You don't ever second guess yourself. You just full speed ahead. No second guessing, no reviewing, no after action plan, no nothing. Two things. One, and I actually thought you. I forgot this was Organ's convention leadership. Yeah, this weekend. So I thought you were like out of town. Out of town, like across the country in Virginia or something.
So when I texted Demossi and said, hey, just a reminder, we're recording Sunday, he's like, oh, okay, thanks for letting me know.
Well, you actually had mentioned it before that you had it coming up because we talked about the audio setup.
Yeah, and we were gonna. I'm like, oh, I could probably record on Saturday when I get home. And you're like, nah, let's push to the next day because you're not gonna wanna record when you get home. Which thankfully I. The next day because I did not want to record yesterday.
Yeah. So what that message actually was supposed to have said is like, thanks for reminding me. Because I didn't remember if I did know, because I wasn't sure that I knew until I thought about it later. I was like, yeah, we did talk about this because we talked. Well, now it comes back to me that we talked about it because I'm like, oh, yeah, this is Oregon's thing. Yeah, we talked about that because we talked about the audio setup and. Yep. I was like, nope, we'll just do Sunday that week because you're not going to want to come straight home and have to sit down.
And I think that's what your message said.
But record a show.
When you're running through the. Through the hotel, you're like, yeah, okay, so he forgot. So fun time.
But yeah, I would have so standing things. So next time, call me. Like, if you can't get me, you can't get me. But call me because we may be able to talk through and figure out what the problem is. Because we kind of did that last year. I think it was for the convention last year.
Yeah, Navio came out great last year, if I remember right. Mallory said it did. So.
So, yeah, call me. I was actually around, so you actually could have probably trouble. What's the word? Not troubleshat that day.
Troubleshooted. Doesn't. Troubleshot.
Troubleshot. That's it. There we go. Okay. You could have troubleshooting, could have worked through it. Yeah, but anytime, man. Call me. Like, if you don't get me, you just can't get me. But call me or shoot me a text, like, hey, you know, you got a sec for this? Because oftentimes it's just a matter of talking through it, even if I don't have an idea. Like, I mean, one situation we've been through like that before you figured out what the problem was as you were explaining to me what you had done and you were like, oh, wait a minute, I know how to fix it. So there's that aspect of it. But yeah, I think there's a lot for me, there's always an after action sort of conversation going on in my head about things and it's like, oh, what could I have done better here how could I have made this work? And if stuff falls apart or really doesn't work the way I want it to, and it should be easy because this is an area that is a part of my core competency. Yeah, it's rough. Pretty mean guy to myself. Like, I tell people, you think I'm mean to you, see how I treat myself. You don't want to be a part of those after action meetings, for sure. But I have similar. I have similar things going on. So it happens. I think a lot of people are like that. And yeah, don't. I think it's valuable to extract from whether it's a, how did I screw this up? Or how did I not screw it up? Or if things went well and it's just like a review. I mean, again, think of it as a, you know, after action meeting with yourself. I think it's valuable to try to extract out what didn't go right and how you can improve. And I think it's valuable to always do that. And I also think it is, as you said, important to kind of remind yourself in this situation, especially when things didn't go according to plan, is one, a plan is just a plan. And it never survives first contact with the enemy. Whether we're talking about war or we're talking about just live streaming some audio, at that point, Zoom becomes the enemy. You're like, yeah, so you're not working. All right, we'll figure you out. And the other thing I would say is it, you know, always keep that in mind. I think that's good for everybody to remember. And the other thing is, you know, extract what you can from it and then just kind of let it go. Like it. You still pulled it off. It worked. It doesn't mean you're a complete failure. And it sucks. And maybe I shouldn't be doing this, but I think everybody goes through that. I think it's valuable to remember that it's just a momentary thing. And again, extract what you can to try to make yourself better. But at some point, let go of the recriminations against why or how, because all you can do is try to plan for the next time.
Right? Yep. And come up with backup solutions.
Because you don't definitely, definitely come up with backup solutions. Test them out. And, you know, we. We've talked about it, and we even talked about speakers a couple of weeks ago. You looking at some speakers? I don't. I didn't think you were going to get any before this event here anyway, but friend of the show and past guest JJ has said better when you bring your own speakers and everything because then you don't have to worry about screwing with their crap.
Yes, sir.
Let's see what, see what GPT told me about this switch.
This person's audio. Let's try -20 decibels. Wow. She came in at 20 decibels over what she should have came in.
Ouch. So I'm going to. I'm slightly trying to make a suggestion, but I'm also asking a question because I'm not 100% certain in this case would having sent her audio or having that audio also going to say a backer recording source like a zoom essentials with the 32 bit float, et cetera, would that be a better like let's say so her audio is peaking or something right with it, with the, you know, zoom. Would the zoom recorder remove because it's got that 32 bit float? Would she not be clipping there and give you a good backup, cleaner backup recording to be able to use?
Yeah, I think so. So this audio, when I first brought it in to Reaper, it was super loud and issue was clippy sounding and I took her down to right now negative. What is she at now? I moved her down to negative 16 decibels and now she's, she's tolerable. I'm actually going to go over here and do normalize to minus 16 lufs. That's a little high actually.
Yes, industry standard.
And see she sounds perfect now like ah, okay. So I, she might have sent me a zoom recorder, an H1E. Well, she has the H1 and the H4, but yeah, so.
Oh, this is audio somebody sent you. This is not. I thought you were talking about audio that you recorded this weekend.
No, no, this audio was something that someone sent me.
Ah, okay.
For a podcast.
So chat GPT because of. Again, I asked a leading question. I tried to ask it the same. I guess I could have went back through my history and found the original question, but I asked it in the same leading way I would have asked it months ago and it still is giving me the. Yeah, it's still giving me instructions on how to rewire it. Did not say so. Hey, there's also. I mean you could do this and here's how. But also there's a switch on the side that does that. So yeah, maybe if I dropped in the specific model number, which I didn't do, but also didn't do that the first time either.
Or if you asked it. Is there a way to fix this or is that what you did?
No, I asked the question the same way I did the first time because I asked a leading question because I assumed I had to rewire it. Because when I was like, how do I fix this? Everything I came across on the Internet was people talking about how to rewire the thing or that it needed to be rewired. And I was like, oh, okay, let me ask GPT how to do that and see how complicated the solution is instead of watching this guy's 26 minute long YouTube video of him pointing at a bunch of stuff. So I asked it that same way with the host that it would come back and be like, hey, just flip this switch. And that makes this whole process unnecessary. But if you really want to rewire here how you go about doing it. But yeah, I can ask the question like, how do I change this behavior? And it may actually give me the correct answer. But it also might help if I dropped it in the actual model number because I don't know how many Ms. There's a couple of different Ms. 11s on Sweetwater that I saw. I was like, I need to figure out the difference in these. That's when I read somebody's comment and I was like, huh, let me go find a screwdriver and dig this thing out of this drawer. I threw it in months ago, so there's that. Now I have a mute switch that works the way I want it to work, which is awesome. And I could also stick it on the floor and just step on it, but I probably won't do that. Yeah, that works. Sometimes it helps to read the manual or do some research on something you've bought that doesn't do what you want to do or figure out that, oh, this product does XYZ thing that I didn't know it did. Let's see if I could find this draft I was looking at because we could save that copilot thing for.
My answer would be very short and I'm not using it. I'm using GPT right now.
Wait, inside of VS code?
No.
Oh, just going to GPT and then copy paste.
Yeah, well, copy code when it gives you code. Copying it.
Okay, so this is going to go back to the conversation here and I'm curious for you, based off the experience this weekend and now having the. The DJI mics road stuff is from Australia. Might not be as expensive.
Might not.
I think we're still friends with them. I'm not sure.
For now. Yeah, for now. Could be different in a couple hours.
Yeah, maybe I'll Grab the rode wireless. I think I said I might do that. Anyway, just to give us a different comparison of the. Since you have the DJI's, I could try the roads so we get our perspective. I think that's what Steven used somewhere too is the road go mics, which sounded really good when he did that event that I think he used him at. I'm not sure if that's what he's still using, but that's neither here nor there. Honestly, the question would you have in the DJI mics, is it still necessary for these type of events, at least for you to have a talkback system so that you can speak directly to a person that you have mic'd up?
I don't think for these type of events it's necessary. I think there's a place for that, but I think for these. No, not really. Really. I. The problem that arises with talkback systems and being able to talk with someone is people are not used to that. You and I, if we have headphones on or an earbud in and we hear a different voice that isn't ours, I'm like, oh, okay, like that, that's not a huge issue. And most of the time we'll pay attention to it. If Carrie, for example, is doing her agenda and all of a sudden someone says, back off the mic, there's a good chance she's going to be like, huh, what? I didn't, I don't understand. Or something of that nature, maybe not quite that detailed, but you know what.
I'm saying, like it's going to throw off what she's doing because she's not going to be able to just continue as she was and just follow the instructions.
But, but there is room. The thing that I think would be more appropriate would be at national convention, for example, if I need, if I need a streamer to a specific zoom room and I'm in one room and the person who's streaming is more than likely off site, possibly in a different state, it would be faster to key up and say, hey, we need a streamer in this room right now. The solution is to send a message to a group text message. Which works. It works. But if I'm in the middle of a room setting up audio, connecting things, making sure everything's ready to go. Honestly, I don't want to go mess with my messages. To find the keyboard to two finger double tap to dictate a message, to hit send. I'd rather just, you know, hit a button on a microphone, say, hey, we need a streamer in Zoom room A and, and have that message go out to a group of people. That's why I've been really toying with the idea of utilizing Zello for palms. Because it's kind of like we could have a group of, of hundreds of people if we needed it. We don't need hundreds in a, in a Zello room, but we can have a group where everyone who has. Now, the problem with Zello, the problem was Zello or walkie talkie on your Apple Watch, which is an interesting feature. Do not rely on that.
Yeah. It is not reliable. And everybody's not going to have an Apple Watch.
But the problem is, is if someone's at another conference room and they're in the middle of an event and they need to hear the messages and they don't have an earbud in, then everyone's going to hear that message. That's the downfall to walkie talkie PTT comms.
Yeah.
But it's their responsibility, I feel, to.
Get a pair of shocks.
Yeah. Oh, man. I was, I was thinking about that the other day. I'm like, the, the shocks or even Ray Bans, like shocks or Ray Bans. Have those on and, and hit the button and just talk and then go on with your day. Like, yeah, yeah.
I don't know. We'll have to play around with it.
Pause. Have you played around with them?
So no, because I didn't see Andy's email. And then when I saw Andy's email, it was like, this closes at such and such a time. I'm like, man, it's 7:30. So I missed that. I was like, oh crap, I gotta figure out how to respond.
Did you miss it though?
Yeah.
Well, that survey closed.
Yeah, that survey closed. Yeah. So I kind of forgot about it after that. Cause I was like, oh, crap. I didn't do the survey to go figure out what I need to do. I will go try it. Try it tonight actually. Because actually I have a need for them. We're gonna have to go label some boxes before I go to bed.
Yeah, it's amazing, man. Like, it's amazing.
Break yours out.
It's be my eyes on your glasses. So you get the be my eyes detail.
Well, no, I haven't used it. I haven't used to be my. I've actually been using Ira's AI for a lot of stuff.
So yeah, we can figure out some sort of solution for comms and we'll talk more about it too. And frankly, it may be for this next Convention that we are using text messages simply because again, we go back to the previous part of this conversation. It's what people are used to or the people that I'll be working with are used to.
Yeah, it works. And you got to think about cost at a certain point of deploying a system. Right. Because ultimately what's needed in this case. So I'll tell you what I was thinking about just in a smaller convention aspect and I was thinking about like the Oregon convention or something. I was like, oh, he's got a Michael Carey. Maybe Carrie can either put an earbud in her ear or some shocks on. And I was like, huh. They could have like a FaceTime audio call open or a WhatsApp call open with the people that Mike needs to speak to, you know, kind of, you know, low key, give them a warning. Everybody in the call is muted except for Mike, but Mike's mute is controlled by hardware. So when he needs to say something, he can, he can activate himself in that specific channel only and say, hey Kerry, you're, you're eating my microphone. And that's not good. That's her indication to back up a bit and she carries on. Now what I also wrote down as I was thinking about this stuff and initially it was like, oh, Micah kind of halfway depressed his mute button right here and said carry it too close to the mic, then she could back up. But also what I wrote down, I was like she would need earbuds or some sort of thing. I'm thinking like shocks maybe because it would leave her ears open or earbud in. I was like, I'm not sure what visually how that would look and that could maybe potentially send the wrong message if it's a too much visible or of a headset or earpiece. But it was a kind of low key, low cost, low tech solution to a problem.
Yeah. And I can actually see a use in that, for example, so she doesn't have to keep asking is so and so from this place on Zoom yet we could just hit a button, say, you know, Greg's here or whatever and then she can transition however she wants to transition. That, that is a solute, a problem to solve. And I'm going to keep that in the, in the forefront of my mind, almost at the background of my mind. But I'm going to be conscious of that because I think that could be, could be helpful for a lot of scenarios. And it is a different tech stack than communicating with background people. And see, my mind went to communicating with other convention other People helping make audio and video go well at convention. For example, we have one main guy who works at audio with acb and the bane of my existence are assisted listening devices because they are, interestingly enough, completely inaccessible. So you have to look on the screen for the receiver and make sure it matches the transmitter channel. And so a lot of times I would, I would text Ryan and I'd be like, hey Ryan, ALD is down or hey Ryan, need help with this ald and if we had a quick and. And he would get the message and see it and, and like do the thing you and I do sometimes think, oh, I'll be right there and then go finish doing what he was doing but forget to actually get about the message.
Yeah.
And then I'm sitting here dealing with understandably frustrated individuals because they can't hear what's going on in the room and they're trying to be quiet, but they can't be quiet. And we're in the middle of a session. And so having, having a quick way to say, hey Ryan, need you hear ALD is not working. And then he can just hit a button. Of course you, you may get the same issue that you had where thinking I'll be right there and not hitting the button to do it. But I think that would lower that friction. Whereas speaking to the presenters is a totally different tech stack, I think.
Yeah. And that's kind of what I was thinking about initially when I was jotting stuff down and I was planning to send you this switch. I was like, oh, that could be a solution. Because Mike could always wire his phone into the board and only send audio to his phone when he needs to, to say to whomever, you know, do XYZ or yada yada, yada Y. Thinking about it more for presenters and trying to figure out a way that would make that a little easier. I think with the wider production team for something like a national convention, one is probably a off air conversation because there's probably stuff that you can't, you know, shouldn't say publicly and Mike maybe shouldn't even tell me. But I'm not taking it anywhere to kind of maybe figure out a solution there. And that to me is where we would start, I think also looking at maybe some of the more professional level comm systems because you got people spread out all over the place and sometimes.
All over the country.
And you need something that can, that can, you know, reach everybody in whatever way they're comfortable and able to use it. So some may have a earpiece that they can just tap and respond to you or put out a call or whatever. And some may just be, you know, at their computer with their earbuds on and, you know, they got, you know, some software running on the computer where they're able to hear you, you know, whatever that may be. So that that's.
You got to be able to target that audio too.
And like, right.
Not everyone needs to hear everything.
Right. And that's also a downside I wrote here to this particular solution for presenters is like, you know, with this solution, everybody that's a part of that call will hear you tell, you know, I'm sorry, Carrie, I'm not really trying to pick on you. You're just the only person's name who I know that will be there. Right. But you telling Carrie to do that also means, you know, everybody else is going to hear that. But again, a little practice with that can help keep people from reacting, including the person that you're actually talking to from reacting, you know, in a way to that. But that is a downside to that. That system, but for a smaller group is manageable for a larger group. You do need to be able to specifically target, hey, I need to talk to this person. And then, you know, you're able to target. And that's where the more professional level talkback systems, I think, come in to play and talk about some of that stuff on office hours. Some of it is expensive, Some of it I think is just a matter of just deploying software and hoping it's accessible and then you're able to use it.
So, yeah, that is a couple of things that we want to chat about. Did you have other things or do we want to wrap it up? Because today's going to be a shorter episode so I can get this turned around and out to people by Monday evening. By the way, if you didn't get the memo, our technically working shows now come out on the evenings of Monday. They'll come out on Mondays, but it's typically, you know, 4 to 7pm Pacific time is when they're coming out. So if you're checking your podcast app of choice for technically working and it's not out first thing in the morning, check back later, or check on Tuesday morning because it'll be out on Monday, just maybe later in the day.
Or follow the bot if you're on Mastodon, twechnically social and you'll get a post when the episode goes live, I.
Would forget we have a bot now because it's new.
We got a bot. It's new and it's still working. Yes, by the way, I really actually didn't do anything to it to make it it post the link. I was waiting for it to post the next episode before I tried to go fix it and it just posted the link. So whatever man, we're gonna leave that alone. Don't leave it alone. Don't touch it. Maybe me re editing the post and then reposting with the link attached did something and it was like oh or.
Or maybe it's listening to the show.
Oh well that's possible too. Although that means that bot is already out of control giving it that much ability.
Bot, if you're listening to the show, give our listeners a hint.
There's a couple of smaller things I wanted to mention that I did jot down. I've talked about moving to the Pixel 9 at least to give it a full try one partially because I really like this phone so I'm gonna try. I finally got signed into Apple Music which is one of the things that was kind of holding me up. I don't think if I mentioned that, but I was trying to sign into Apple Music. We need your six digit code. I'm like I didn't get a code anywhere. And just a side note, I had to go back to using Apple System. I think at some point I mentioned I had switched over to using Yubikeys for my 2 factor on my Apple account, partially cause I had to test it out to see if it really worked, which it did. It was fine. I do make you attach two keys just so you have a backup or something. However, at the time when I was on the OR testing stuff on the Pixel 8, nope. Yep. I don't know. Last year you couldn't sign into Apple Music if you on Android if you were using Yubikey as your second factor, it just did not present you with the option. It wanted a code and they no longer show codes to you in Settings. Even though I think the help text there tells you that as well as a couple of articles on Apple's website still say that you can go into Settings to get your code if you don't receive it on your device as a pop up. That is no longer true.
That's frustrating. But at least you and you can't just use a Yubikey in Android to enter that code.
No, because the code they're looking for is what you would normally get like pop up on your phone. It's like hey, you're trying to sign into your Mac MacBook in Oregon it's just you and it gives you a code or it sends it to you as a text message. Yep. So yeah, the Yubikey option just is not presented. I actually called Apple. I actually called Apple about that and went around, around and found it. The lady was like, yeah, so the Android app actually hasn't been updated to support that. I was like, well, that's awesome.
Thanks, thanks, thanks.
Yeah, appreciate it. So anyway, but. And I thought I was just stuck in a loop last week, a couple of weeks ago when I was trying to sign in Apple because listen, Apple Music is critical for me to have access to and if I can't use Apple Music on it, I can deal with switching podcast apps. I'm not switching music services primarily because I'm not going to pay for another one. Yeah, because there are ways to export your playlist and all of that stuff, so that's fine. But I'm just not going to pay for another service.
You'd have to pay for a set separate service to get.
Yeah, exactly. So that's not happening. And they have not tricked me into paying for YouTube Premium yet. That would include YouTube Music, which I still wouldn't use. So got signed into Apple Music. I'm gonna try the switch and see how it goes. Currently my Pixel has the phone number on a very cheap unlimited talking text plan. And I think there may be a gig of data or something included in that. But anyway, it's 10 bucks a month for the Bedroc Innovations number is what's currently activated on that phone. So there is some phone service on there for testing purposes. I'm thinking about making the switch and bringing my. Which is currently what I have on my iPhone right now is my personal line, of course. And did the Spirals number because that's the phone that I'm always carrying with me. Those calls are, I don't say more important, but more frequent than calls to Bedrock Innovations. I'm in a bit of a conundrum. Air message doesn't seem to be working at the moment. I'm not really sure if I should depend on something like that. Anyway, a part of me says just move the Spirals number over to the Pixel and just make that a work phone and then have the iPhone as a personal phone. Which means, I don't know, four of my calls to that phone. Probably because I'm not going to carry two phones. They're too big for the most part. I'll have one in my backpack so I could carry the iPhone that way. Not sure what I'M going to do about that just yet, but I probably will make the switch sometime in the in the coming weeks. There's a new app that I just heard about or discovered when researching Blue Bubbles that is also supposed to allow you to do imessage on Android. Little more complicated to set up. You got to do a Google Firebase thing so it's a little more complicated than error message but error message isn't working. But I'm gonna try to pixel out most of what I need slash use on my phone is available on Android so that's awesome. I have been actually using the phone. I used it to shoot some video the other day as a matter of fact of me using the six dot labeler which I need to send off to my niece to have her edit up into something usable but probably gonna at least try that out. I'm not sure if I'll make it to the end of May. We'll see when I actually move over and see if I make it to Memorial Day. That's the first goal.
Yeah.
Another thing I'm thinking about doing is I'm gonna minimize the number of VMs that I have have. I don't have that many, but I probably have more than I should have. Here's my thought process though because like you and I think I'm not sure if I put this idea in your head. If we just chatted about it and had came to the same decision. But for example, I have an At Guys machine and I run that machine up when I'm doing AT Guys stuff that requires me to be in Windows. It occurred to me I only have one Mac. Yeah And I do all the stuff that I do on the Mac on the Mac like it doesn't matter what company it's for or whatever. I do all that stuff on the Mac. The only thing I probably should do at some point is set up another because I did have this on an older Mac some years ago is set up another account that I use just for demos so I don't have to go screw up my personal stuff when I'm trying to show somebody how to do a thing. But other than that that's just a different user account though I'm still on the same Mac. I was like well why don't I just use one Windows vm spec it out pretty decent in the settings so give it a decent amount of RAM and hard drive space. And that's my Windows machine that is probably kind of always running in the background except when I close it intentionally and that's where Windows stuff happens. Doesn't matter which company is for. It'd be like me having a Windows laptop. I'm not going to switch accounts to go through all that. I will have a Tinker Windows machine for me to tinker with stuff. Because I have to go tinker with stuff and I don't want to break my environment.
Yes, I called mine my dev machine. But yeah, Tinker, you know, But I.
Think that's what I'm going to do is probably. Well, I have that one already set up. I'm probably what I'm going to do is just do one more installation, kill off the couple extras that I have sitting there. Inspect this one out with maybe like 12 gigs of RAM and, and a decent amount of hard drive space.
Give it like 16 or 24, because you have 30, 36.
So yeah, I'll probably give it 16.
Yeah, there you go.
That'll leave me 20 for the Mac. Yeah, that works. Give it 16 gigs of RAM and just have that as a machine. And that way I can more easily set up shortcuts, like with Open End, for example, to say, okay, if I click this sort of link or I'm opening this kind of file, open it over in Windows, you know, things like that. Because, yeah, you know, open it in Windows, which is just going to be Windows, right. So like from clicking on a LinkedIn.
Opening a Microsoft Word document, it opens in Microsoft Word.
Yeah, on Windows or. Which is good. I was trying to think of Zendesk, like if I click on a Zendesk link, open that in Windows every time. Like, don't open it in Chrome over there. So I think that's, that's gonna help minimize the amount. And then it lets me build out a beefier machine. It was like, I don't have to shut down this machine and open up this machine. Unless I'm about to screw around with something that dev machine will have like my weird DRM removal. Things that may or may not actually exist. Allegedly.
Allegedly. I like that idea. I use nvda, my development machine, and I actually deleted it the other day. So right now I just have my @ guys machine, which I haven't opened in, in quite a while. But I like that idea of just having one or two virtual machines because honestly, they take up a lot of disk space too. So yeah, there is that. But in my dev machine I used NVDA and I had JAWS in my Windows machine. I'm like, you know, you should consolidate those and use one screen reader because a lot of Times I'm like, why is this not working? Although I will say Windows Terminal within VDA can be easier and so instances.
So I have JAWS installed in a Windows vm, but also I have nvda. Which one actually knows one of these? It's just the one where I use the license key that was purchased for my use of Windows.
Ah, yeah.
But I still find myself using NV8 just because that's what I'm using everywhere else. And I'm probably wrong, but I feel like there's a learning curve to JAWS that I'm going to have to get around because it's been so long since I've actually used jaws. Like even when I was still on Windows full time, my last couple of years, couple of three years with Windows was nvda. Mostly because at the time I was using different laptops because I was doing a lot of laptop borrowing 13 years ago, so I might borrow my sister's laptop for this. And then now I'm in Atlanta, so I'm using this person's computer. So I just had NVDA on a flash drive. I plug it in and there's my portable nvda with my Firefox installation and my Skype portable installation, all of that stuff. It's probably not that difficult to get back in the jaws. I must say once again that the tweaks to the virtual machine, that's the other reason. It started me thinking about this too, because I kept opening up machines like, why ain't this work? Oh, because I didn't make those changes that I made to that.
Okay.
Oh crap. I gotta install sharp keys over, over here. But man, sharp keys. The tweak to the settings about passing through keys is amazing. I can bring up reliably, consistently the element picker or what would be like the links list or whatever and JAWS on the web and go through things. Yeah, I forgot that was even a keystroke I hadn't been able to use in so long. Yeah, insert F7. That can be your. I think it's insert F7. Or it's F6. I forget. Anyway, my fingers know how to press it.
Links list is F7.
Yeah. So it's F7.
Sweet. Well, I'm glad that helps.
Yeah, man, I think that's it. I am back to spreadsheets very heavily. I'm probably going to start tinkering with Excel. Yeah.
Google sheets.
Google sheets I really got to look at. There's some stuff I want to wire. That's the other thing that I'm really Trying to figure out is it worth me for workspace for spirals or not. I really haven't made a decision on that. Should I just set up a. So my options here are. Because I do want to have some separation so stuff doesn't get mixed in. There will be a spirals Google account of some sort. But you know, on the most base simple level, just go create a Google account with that with, with, with. With a spiral's email address. And, and hey, I got docs and sheets. There's the workspace essentials that I think is still available for free. That gives you some of the basics. I think that throws in calendar and contacts. You just don't get mail and something else with that. Or just pay for a full on Google workspace license on a tier and use it that way. I don't know why this is such a difficult decision to make other than I have been kind of sort of of, I don't know, resistant to spending money on. Gotta spend, I guess. I don't know, man. It's like what are the pros and cons of this? Although I feel like I should make a decision and stick with it, which is probably gonna end up just doing a workspace license because this is a business that should be solid. If I want to mess around with differing ways of running services, I think the consulting business is the one for that. Cause that's his role. This just needs to work.
Yep. Just needs to be consistent and work for you.
And eventually there are going to be other people who have accounts up under this. Which is why I'm really looking at workspace even over something like fast mail and just trying to make it simple and straightforward. Because I hire somebody at some point that needs actual access to an email address.
Moving yourself is easier than moving multiple people.
Yeah. And dealing with weird stuff is easier for me. Like, you know, if I got to set up a profile just so I don't have to configure all settings manually on the Mac or whatever for, you know, email and calendars. I'm fine with that. I'm perfectly okay with that. Doing it for somebody else is a pain in the neck, man. I've done it for a company and it was not fun. It was their choice. I mean, but still it was not fun because people lose the profile or they delete the profile. It's like, oh, my email doesn't work. I don't see it on here. It's like, okay, let's go do this, let's do this, let's do. Hey, hey, go here, here and here. In Settings, do you see a profile that says company name Services? No, I deleted it because I didn't know what that was for. That was how your email was configured on your device, in your contacts. Yeah.
So next week, hint at hint hint. I will follow up and talk about my use of AI in automating with Google Apps scripts. More information about that next week because I'm 97.5% sure I'm almost where I want to be. So definitely exciting times. And it'll be follow up on our previous conversation. It's funny, I texted one of our volunteers today because she's like, hey, this came up. Where do you want to move them to? And I'm like, well, give me a couple minutes, let me go look and I'll get this figured out because I don't have these things memorized. Then I texted her back sooner than the time frame that I gave myself. And then she thanked me and I'm like, you're welcome, by the way. We're going to get this automated some way so we don't have to keep doing this and we can make sure that everything gets to where it needs to be. And her comment back was, that'll be so nice. Have a good day. Or something like that. And like, yep, my automation is going to impact more than just myself and it's going to make a lot of people's lives so much easier. So I will follow up next week with some more details on where we are with that, that and how we're using AI to help with generating that content. Well, that, that coding.
Cool. Yeah. And I should have some preliminaries on some automations that I'm working on because I, I think I have just decided to just go ahead and do workspace. So we're going to do that. I need, I need sheets because it'll allow me to do some things on the web for sure.
I like.
And Mike has convinced me. Well, he hasn't convinced me just telling me that, you know, sheets is. What was the word you used? Was it amazing? I think it was amazing on Windows.
Amazing.
Nobody's ever said that about sheets. But knowing where Mic.
But every software does.
Yeah, but knowing where we both are trying to use it on the Mac, for you to say it's amazing is like, okay, well that makes a difference. I gotta, gotta get it.
Oh, it's still crap on the Mac. Just, just full transparency.
Yeah, I know that's what you. But for the experience on Windows to be amazing, not just it's better. Like Zendesk is not amazing on Windows. It's just better and more useful usable than it is on the Mac. Yeah, like there's a different sort of. It's like, oh, well, just use Zendesk and Windows. Okay, well, no, it is better and easier, but it's not amazing.
Yeah, and it's Google connected products, which means it works with other tools.
Gemini, anyone? Maybe not.
If you're a student, you can get Gemini Pro whatever for free. Just saying.
Oh, well, you know, all the students out there who are interested in AI or, you know, you still have access to your edu email, which some places let you keep forever. Have at it. I've never stuck around in anybody's school long enough to even use the email.
You may have emails that are active that you don't even know about.
Right, that's what I was thinking. Like, you know, I probably actually have some that may be active, but I never stick around long enough to ever actually use their email. They weren't doing their own ebay. I don't know. It's weird. Anyway, we want to thank everybody for listening. This has been technically working episode 107. Okay, I thought I was right when I said what I was about to say. 107. All right. This has been technically working episode 107. I appreciate you listening. Thanks to our tip jar supporters, as always. We appreciate it. I won't even mention the eggs this week because it was tax week, so man, thanks to everybody who listens. Of course we're appreciated. If you get Value Entertainment something out of the show, please do us a favor and share with someone else. Share on any social media platform you choose to. The best link to give people is technically working show. That'll get them to our page. That's also where you can go to become a tip jar supporter yourself. If you have started to raise chickens and don't have to worry about the cost of eggs, you can follow us on social media. He is Payone P a Y o w n dragonscave space. That's D R a g o n S C a v e.space I am Damasi D a M a S H E at technically social and the showbot is twecnically social. You can also use the hashtag technically working which I am following and Michael is following and also our bot is following. So, you know, maybe the bottle repost.
You shout out to the bot.
Yeah.