11: Storytelling

That was a good show man. That was good. Good job on that. Thanks for putting that together. That was I This week I've just been more scattered. So I appreciate you Lining up the content for this one. This was interesting stuff, too. Yeah, no problem. I Like I said, I was kind of sitting around the other night and I don't know what I literally have no fucking clue What brought up the whole? Storytelling bullshit, but I was like man, I need to become better at that. Yeah, it's good It's good timing because I was having the same conversation. I'm glad you brought it up because I was thinking myself Just the other day about that when I was walking back from one of my Starbucks runs I don't know if we got anything for a post-show on this particular episode We don't have a bully here to out himself on a whole bunch of different subjects No, we don't I'm a little distracted because I keep getting blown up over here, so I kind of might need to go check and see what the fuck's going on Oh! I don't know what's going on. [Music] What's going on dude? Oh, buddy. It's been a day. It's been a good day. You've been doing some configuration. It looks like to me. Let's just say the XPS 13 is locked and loaded ready for some app development. Sweet. Yeah, that's pretty cool. We got the Hackintosh going on on there. How was that? How was that to set up? Dude, it was way too easy. Like some guy Posted an article last September that had like 500 comments attached to it So I figured it was legit enough because a lot of people tried it out and Essentially it was going to he had all the links set up you went to his Google Drive account and downloaded OS 10 Yeah, so I'm running I'm rocking high Sierra OS 10 3 Is it 10 3 or 10 13 10 13 right? Yeah, I have no idea. Yeah 10 13. So it's the latest release of OS 10 And I'm running that on a VM It's kind of kind of a virtual box setup. So it's running on Windows So you have windows in the background there. That's just a full-screen VM. You were showing there. Yeah Yeah, I'll need to tweak the performance and all that kind of crap because right now it's not Certainly not zippy even though I'm rocking a new i8 i7 8th gen i7 and 16 gig RAM 512 hard drive. I gave it I Only gave it two out of the four cores and I gave it four gigs of RAM So maybe if I play with that a little bit it'll get better Yeah, I'm sure you probably need I mean two cores anymore is jack shit. So yeah, I think if I give it all four I think that laptop is a four core. I Gotta check if I yeah that new processors a four core so if I because I think the I7 the seventh gen was only a dual core Okay, I got it So if I give it all four, I think it's gonna lock up the machine, but I'll try it out and see what happens sure Sweet yeah, it looks nice. It looks nice. I was getting Xcode installed. That's why I was a little late getting in here But yeah, that's a that's a beast Huge yeah, five and a half gigs Well, OS 10 Sierra was six gigs and I downloaded that in about five minutes. It was fast. Woo! Yeah, that high speed internet's coming into good use today. Cool, man. How's your stuff going? It's good. I don't have anything as sexy as that, but I put up a pretty fancy foam background here. I love that. That looks awesome, man. Those are the tiles that you got online. I did yeah and then I didn't want it to be a permanent structure so I put it on. I use a little like industrial glue and I put it on a piece of cardboard so I can put it up and take it down anytime I want it. You sound great. Do you feel a difference sitting down over there? I was testing before you came around and I think it did eliminate some of the background echo-iness that was going on so yeah I think it's a lot better. Yeah, I don't hear any of the echo at all right now. It just falls flat. Sweet. That's exactly what I was hoping for. Yeah, I think it's doing a good job. If that works out for you, I might need to do a similar thing. You already got the big pipes, man. You're good. Well, that's what she said. Ho! Hey. Mmm. Are we talking about something today? Do we have a show? I mean, I just figured we'd bullshit for a few hours. No problem. We can do that all the time. We had a listen of the last episode, number 10. Episode X. Episode X, the X episode. That was good. X factor. It was good. I liked having Bully on there. He brought a good dynamic to the show, I thought. Yeah, there was quite a bit of depth there that I don't, you know, I think we kind of, kind of glaze over the top of subjects a lot of times. a lot of times, I mean, sometimes we go into depth, but I think he brings another insightfulness to the show that we maybe we don't we don't deep dive quite as much as he does. So he's very thorough and that's why I wanted him on there for that purpose. Yeah, exactly. I think and I think he did exactly what we had hoped. If he wants to continue to come on, that'd be cool. He we should probably work on his sound quality, maybe get him a little foam, maybe get him a little acoustic panel action. Yeah. And then, you know, then he'd be all set. He did bitch to me about how many times he said like in one segment. Well, that's just gonna happen. That's what I told him. When you're a rookie. Yeah. It's gonna take a few reps to get that out of the system. Yep. Yeah. Speaking of his thoroughness, you know, I give him credit for going so deep. I didn't ask him to tell me about coming out straight though. It took a little too far, I think. - I mean, I thought out of a nice comedic element too and otherwise, pretty thorough show. So I think it was good. - It was good to have them on. - I did get some feedback from my sister who has mentioned that she's listened to every episode thus far. And I mentioned to her that in the upcoming episode, I might be mentioning my grandmother and maybe a little bit about something that she didn't know. She clicked on or liked on Facebook and she thought that was pretty damn entertaining. - Oh good, is grandma listening on her iPad then? Do we find that out? - I don't know about that, but I think my sister thought it was gonna be a little bit more racy than even that. - Oh my goodness, wow, that sounds like a fun future episode. (laughing) - The first topic that I wanted to talk about kinda came up yesterday for me. I was sitting on the couch and I don't really know what brought it to my attention, But I got to thinking to myself that I'm really not a very good storyteller. And what I mean by that is I feel like I drift or sometimes I talk too fast or I'm not patient enough to kind of leave dead air silence, which I think sometimes is necessary. I don't know, I'm just not a very good storyteller and I'd like to become better at that. And I think that's a goal of mine in addition to becoming just a better speaker overall. Well, amen. I feel the same way. And that's something that Gary Vee talks about actually a few times, not all the time, but that's one of the key elements that he talks about is you have to be a good storyteller. And I agree. I could be a much better storyteller. I have moments where I can, I have little anecdotes here and there, but I think that in my estimation, I'm not as good as I would like to be. And then I have a long way to go. I got a lot to build on. I always think back to my grandfather who whenever he would start to say something, you could kind of tell that he was getting into one of these story modes and he would start to right along and move along and such a, it was almost like a particular vibe that he gave off. I'm not really even sure how to describe, but when he would do that, it was crazy because regardless, like if you had eight people around a circle or something and everybody was talking amongst themselves and he was talking to one other person and telling this story, everybody would eventually just come around and start to be enveloped in his story and everybody else would shut up. And I don't know what causes that, if that's just being a great storyteller or if that's his aura or his like, I don't even know what the word I'm looking for here is like, if that's just his like charisma maybe. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I think part of it is that there are probably multiple elements to go into it. But my dad was a good storyteller and he had that charisma, the same kind of quality you're talking about your grandfather where you could just get a room to shut up and listen and I don't know I tried taking some notes I tried taking some paying attention to that and there there are multiple qualities now and I don't know what all of them are but I was thinking about that the other day even just like the way he describes it's not even it's not even like factual you're not trying to describe a fact, but it's just how it kind of weaves. Like there's a flow, there's a certain flow to it that isn't just like recanting something, but drawing some suspense. People are wondering, oh, what's going on next? What's happening? You know, there's gotta be some common elements that go into storytelling. - Part of it for sure is age. You know, he's had a lot of years to put fine polish those stories and figure out what works and what doesn't. And I think that's a huge part of it. But I think, to your point, I think another part of it is charisma. And I think another part is just knowing, I think there's a part, like knowing that the person is a good storyteller to begin with. And once you kind of notice that they're on their cadence and they're kind of in their storytelling mode, whatever signifies that, people just shut up and listen. Well, I agree with that. What do you intend to do? How are you going to polish this a little better? How are you going to work on that? I don't really know the answer. I started researching a little bit just like what makes a good storyteller. And that's a fairly nebulous question that people, they can give you some kind of general facts, but they're not necessarily great ones. A lot of them are trim out unnecessary details, which I definitely am and poor at, I tend to kind of jump to the side and add details that probably aren't necessary to the story. That's definitely one that they recommend taking care of. Conciseness without losing, without losing details that are necessary to the story is another. I don't know, there wasn't really a whole lot. There wasn't like a smoking gun or a great book or a great article that I read. And I was like, oh, yeah, that's what I can work on. Aside from those, maybe those two items, but Not nothing really definitive out there on how to work your storytelling. Not really. So I guess what I kind of came down to is as part of the podcast, I guess I want to try to teach myself to slow down in that dead space, dead air silence, I guess, if you will, is okay. I think a lot of times I'll try and rush my thought out. Maybe because I used to feel like as a kid, I wouldn't get it out. I would get interrupted or people would start doing other things before I'd finished what I was trying to say. So I don't know, I'm just trying to, I'm trying to feel my way through it. It was something that I sat and thought about for quite a while last night. And like I said, I did a little bit of research into it, but I don't know, it's just something that I want to try and figure out and figure, see if I can figure out what the keys to it are and I guess crack that nut a little bit. Well, I'd love to know what you find out. I should do some research on it too and see what else is out there. But I have had the same thought and would also have admired those people that can be that captivating. And I have done some reading on charisma. I can say that there's a good book, the charisma myth. And it, what it talks to is it's a little bit like you were saying it It dispels the myth that charisma is something either we have or we don't have. So it talks about the different types of charisma and how you can develop that, which can lead to other things, which if you put together, if you figure out other elements of storytelling and you can apply different techniques with charisma around it, then you're well on your way. And I think of storytelling in my example as my grandpa sitting around a campfire and just telling bullshit jokes that are pretty lengthy or stories from his childhood or whatever it may be. But it can also apply to business and to marketing and to whatever your story is around your business. In fact, we're kind of doing that at work. We're trying to shape what the story of our business is or what our tech story is, I guess they keep referring to it as. But it needs to be captivating because ultimately the business, the companies that are coming into potentially a quirus are going to be reading that material and the same thing applies. They need to be captivated and interested and excited by the products and services and things that we've built. Well, that's a good example right there. So when you're trying to captivate that audience, I know that some of the feedback that came back initially was, "Well, this was just way too tech heavy and I think that's the rut that we can get into sometimes is that we know the material very well, but we're not relaying it in a way that the audience can understand or be interested in. I think that's fair. That's a, yeah, I think that can apply both ways to kind of the same point that I made earlier with maybe too many details in the story that aren't applicable or really don't matter, but maybe in your mind they, they're there and you just kind of continue to spew them out each time you tell the story. I guess you can clean those things up a little bit and hone the story over time. Right. Yeah. It has to be concise to the point, exciting. It is a marketing effort. It's really marketing. It's a pitch. And so if it's just the facts or I keep coming back to facts, it's not only just that, but I think it has to be geared towards the audience as well. And I noticed you do it already even on editing the show, I noticed you'll definitely pause for pretty considerable amounts of time sometimes even to the point maybe where sometimes it's slightly uncomfortable which sounds odd and sounds like a negative thing but really I don't think in this case it really is I think it. It portrays something I think there's a quality there I think there's you know you know that you're thinking about something or trying to put a polished thought together before you just kind of. Zip it out there and say something that's you know say a whole bunch of words like or and or if you know whatever and putting a putting a good thought out there. That still takes a lot of time for me that's why I think there's additional delay because I am. stopping myself from spewing out those things that i'll get mad at and say fuck on the show. You say fuck all the time anyway it doesn't matter well i don't mind saying fuck but usually i'll say oh yeah yeah you know. Yeah it's i've had a slow way down. I think it's good and i need to learn to do the same thing as well and and. Annunciate and be a little slower with my delivery. And I don't know I don't really have a particular end to this particular topic I think it was just more of a bullet point that I. That was interesting I thought we could talk about a little bit and I think. I think it applies to everybody not just me. I agree. I on that note actually I'm gonna change it up a little bit. The this has been a fun. A fun revelation doing this show so I was in town last week I went out with some people on Thursday did some karaoke. Why not? What else are you gonna do in Seattle on a Thursday night besides some karaoke and Yeah, I was out with a few tech guys a few guys that listened to the show and They don't work with us. They're just other friends that I know in the biz in the industry and we're we got the talking about The show and about how we came to start it up which was really just a personal experiment right for us to get more comfortable here in our voice and putting out content and that all that kind of stuff that's right and one of the one of the guys that I was talking to he's He's in depth. He's a dev ops guy awesome dude. I've known for a while really smart guy And it surprised me, but I'm not as much tell you what he's what he told me was that a he Love that we're doing it and enjoyed listening to the show. He thought it was cool that we're doing it and be that he wanted to do something similar I think you want to get into blogging not podcasting, but he felt that It was it was he had a hard time getting started because For him he had a belief that the content needed to be unique Or that what he had to say wasn't important or relevant or wouldn't reach an audience And I thought it was interesting because that's so much of what he said Resonated with me in the beginning of why I didn't want to do the podcast is thinking that well We don't have anything unique to say we're just regurgitating somebody else's news or stories and just putting our opinions in there and So it is relatable. It's interesting just how talking to other people They've had similar thoughts, but then held back because think they thought that well maybe it's not interesting enough or people wouldn't be interested, want to listen to it. So I love that topic. I love when that topic comes up because I'm hearing it a lot more now from people because we're doing it. And I think there's, at least in my book, and I think in your book, because I think you've mentioned this before, there's kind of a tendency to shy away from talking about things that maybe aren't the cutting edge kind of with the thought in mind that oh This has already been done people have already talked about it people already passed it. It's old news There's already a ton of data about it ton of articles about it, etc. Etc. Yes, but the fact is is that there's other people coming up behind you who Don't have experience with these things and yes those articles do exist, but it's there's I think there's kind of a How would you describe maybe like a growing up together kind of mentality? So, you know, I feel like when I came into the web industry there was a whole slew of people that I followed and They were the top of mind leaders and and I've kind of grown with that set of people. I haven't necessarily brought in a whole lot of new sources of You're not looking you're not looking very broadly for information out there sort new sourcing You've you kind of have your staple places that you go and people that you follow and you don't really go outside that border a whole lot is what it sounds like. There you go. Exactly. That's a great way to describe it. And so I think there's new people coming up all the time and they're going to grab and latch on to other content that's being created and find these other people that are creating interesting or great articles and they're going to latch on to that and grow up with those folks, you know, that are more their age or in their their skill set or you know that sort of thing so I think it makes a lot of sense to continue to Publish even if you don't feel like it's brand new or if it's top of mind or cutting edge Well, that's right. I agree with that a hundred percent and we found that to be the case with us doing this podcast too. There's a lot of What I find mentally blocking is these view these very extreme viewpoints Well my if I don't have unique content that I'm gonna have none at all if it's not cutting edge than I don't want to talk about it. A very extreme view. Also too, well, it's not going to be interesting to anybody. Nobody's going to want to listen to it. It's interesting the language that's in play there because it's very extreme. What we have found through our experience just in a few handful of episodes, we're not after everybody. We're not trying to be the end-all source that we're not starting out that way. We're really starting out just as a personal project. We want to talk about things that we find interesting. And some people like that, and some people don't. And it's okay. We make this show very open. It's open-ended. And although it's tech-related, we don't always talk about tech topics. And I think that makes it far more flexible, far more easy to continue doing. This show, for instance, is a great example of that. the opening here, we did a thing on storytelling, which has nothing to, well, I mean, it can be applicable to tech, but it's not directly related to tech. It's more of a personality building or a, you know, a personal issue. So I think I guess what I'm trying to get out here is maybe the blog doesn't have to be specific to DevOps or it doesn't have to be specific to IT. It can have some other elements in there that make it more personal, make it more relatable to more people and more folks and give you a voice that makes you interesting and unique and something that people want to follow? 100% agree on that. Yeah, when we were talking about it, I said, "Look, I would love to hear what you're doing, what you're working on, what you're struggling with." And the whole process, I think that's what makes it valuable is just coming from a real point of view. You don't have to come in at this point of being an expert in all things, but just sharing experiences of, "Oh boy, this was really difficult for me to write and here's why. And this is a project that I'm working on and this is something that I had to overcome. I think people relate with the vulnerability there more than they are relating with somebody who's coming off as the foremost expert. Yep, I think that kind of lends to your project that you were doing, the "Warts and All" thing. I think that is appealing in a way because, yeah, exactly to your point, you're being vulnerable with people and that's a very, very human thing that most people don't don't want to let you in on. So more people have that experience and the view of being experts. So I think that's why you can grab and attract more of an audience, because they're probably looking at ways to break open to and, and, and break out and not be, and we're not perfect. So it's a good place to meet people. Agreed. Well, let's move on, shall we? Let's head on to one quick show note that we have on the show today and that is we've talked a little bit about it. And I think we're going to back off slightly and do one show a week as opposed to two. Oh, we could put a little sound effect in there of like a crowd going, we do that. That'd be cool. Oh, hang on. I'll see what I can do. I've just got a pop up on my screen from Mr. Lehi. - Oh, what's Pat up to? - Pat just sent me a text, it's in all caps, and it says Joseph Bully. (laughing) - I love it. - So, Bully, you're coming out, not just your family, but your fellow former coworkers as well, so everybody's getting to know you a little better today. - I'll have to leave this on here to give Pat a little shout out. Pat, maybe Pat wants to be on the show. He's doing some pretty cool shit right now at the Allen Institute He told me a story about that. I don't know if I can tell it well, but I'll throw it out there He was telling me a story about Yeah, this is cool. I thought it was interesting. I don't know how many companies do this, but they don't have Typical seating like you and I would have so all the tech guys are in one room or all the DevOps guys are together The programmers are together, not the case at the Allen Institute. There they have people scattered throughout the whole organization. So he's in an area that is not connected to him really at all. It's not even really a team. It's like a random shake-up of people. So they're kind of going with, we almost tried this a little bit, almost like an embedded idea, although they're not even embedded with a team that relates to him. Oh, they're not embedded. He could be next to the marketing person, next to the salesperson, next to the scientist. They're all over the place. And then they have common spaces. And then do they just do everything digitally? Yeah, they do a lot of things digitally. They also have, sounds like they have plenty of common spaces and whiteboarding rooms that they can get together. And so if they need to meet up as a team, they can do that. But they aren't positioned together that way. That's interesting. curious to know how he likes that and how he's getting along with that sort of yeah I'd like to get him get him on and talk about it a little bit more maybe I know in the beginning It was a little disorienting for him just because it was hard to find people where they're supposed to be he didn't know anybody And he didn't know what's worse. So sure or challenging, but maybe now he has a different take on it Very cool. Well, yeah hit him up and see if he is He's only gonna be able to come on if he's listening so if he doesn't hear this then he's gonna lose his opportunity to come on the show Oh, that's a short notice Pat when you listen to episode 11 You got to let us know that you when you can come on and and give us Give us a little airtime All right back to business We're gonna gonna drop back to one show a week To is quite a bit of content people were falling behind I heard It was a lot of editing work on my part. So I think doing one a week Makes a lot more sense and I think that's what Mike and I have agreed upon. Is that right? I agree with that I would love to Find more time to do too, but it just hasn't happened right now There's a lot going on and especially with travel and work and projects and all those types of things I Find it difficult just to show up for 90 minutes twice a week and then you have to edit that shit so That's a lot more work in time Yeah, and we were shooting originally for like 30 to 45 minutes and most of the shows are going more like an hour Which that's fine. I'm not I'm not concerned about that per se, but We were putting two cut two hours of content out there as opposed to an hour Which we had originally planned on doing so instead we're just gonna do basically an hour one one time a week and there you go There you go. That's a lot of people I talked to were still Early episodes, so I think that cadence is probably fine I don't think people have time to listen to two hours worth of coffee and co-cast. Would you want to listen to us for two hours? It's painful. I've tried to do it. It's not easy. All right. Let's move on to today's topic. What are we talking about today, KJ? Well, I was interested or just kind of wanted to wrap with you about vehicle autonomy. I have a Tesla Model 3 on order. When's that bitch arriving? Have you figured it out yet? Who the hell knows? I think it depends on your options at this point. So if I was to take all the expensive options, I could potentially have it like this month. But because I don't need the super battery and I don't know all the super trim and best wheels and all that business, then I probably won't get mine till like September. Okay. I think is the time frame. later this year. Yeah. So there's been a lot of talk about Tesla cars and and this car even can, for instance, pull itself out of your garage and you can summon it and kind of do all these autonomous-ish things that are kind of precursors to full autonomy. And I've had a number of conversations with some people this week regarding this article that I have linked here that I'll I'll put in the show notes. It's from... who is it from? It's from hacker noon.com, which I've actually seen a number of articles from lately all of a sudden. That really fascinated me and it kind of got into the idea of autonomy becoming more than cars. Like cars is looking at it in a very short-sighted way. And so what they start to describe is... let's use you as an example. So if you're traveling to San Francisco, or sorry, you're traveling from San Francisco to Seattle. Instead of when you land in Seattle, maybe you hail what they call a room. And since it's not a it's not really a car anymore, it's basically an electronic chassis that has a box on the top of it that can do many, many functions. It could be an office, it could be a room to sleep in, it could be a kitchen, it could be, you know, anything you want it to be. So this thing, you just get in it. And you just like Alexa, you say, Hey, you know, whatever vehicle I want to go to quote, Wizard Office, boom, away it goes. Because it knows autonomously how to get there. It knows how to get on every road and deal with other autonomous vehicles that are on the road. And it takes you there. So you can just be free to do whatever it is you want to do. You don't even have to worry about the vehicle anymore. And it goes on and on and on from there. And I just found this idea quite fascinating because I had always just kind of thought of the driverless cars aspect of it. And once you got into this, because it even goes a step further from that. So like now you're done with work and you hail another one of these things and say, hey, I want to go. Let's say what would be a good example here in Seattle. I want to go to Vancouver, BC tomorrow. So you get in your little room and you say, Hey, I want to go to Vancouver, BC and this thing just starts driving and you now are in a bedroom and you can sleep. And when you wake up in the morning, bam, you're in Vancouver, BC. Hell yeah. That sounds awesome. Another example they give is like, all right. So middle of the night, you got to wake up and you got to take a piss. So you yell at Alexa and you say, Hey, I need a bathroom. Well, now here comes like almost like a train. Here comes an autonomous bathroom links up to your car that you're in. You use it, it disconnects, leaves, and away you go, right? Like the possibilities become pretty insane when you start to think about this. And then they even kind of go onto, once you get to Vancouver, BC, you can now park your room in these like high-rise structures. So effectively it grabs your vehicle and puts it in like a stacked tower. And then now it's, now it's like a hotel, right? And then you can ask for additional rooms to be stacked next to you so that you can utilize those. So you say, "Oh, I want an office and I need a kitchen and, you know, I need a billiards room and a pool or whatever the hell it is you want." And it just like slots these items next to you so that you can utilize them. Makes a lot of sense. I already see some of that coming up. Even at CES last week, you know, they had the driverless Pizza Hut. Yeah, exactly. They had these, it was a similar idea. They had these platforms that could drive around and bring it to you. And that was kind of the first step. It's not as advanced as some of this, but it makes natural sense. It would progress this way where you could even say, Oh, I want to go get something from the gap and the gap comes to you at your house or something like that. That's an interesting concept, but with autonomy and driverless. Why not? Exactly. And then they even kind of start talking about it being a negotiator. So in the example that I was giving where these, these rooms are stacked into this tower and you think about that as a hotel, well, you're going to need some kind of a rental fee. Right. So let's say in Vancouver, BC, it's, you know, 30 bucks a night for you to, for you to be slotted in that, that tower. Well, your vehicle is autonomous and smart. So it can negotiate and figure out where there's a cheaper tower. Right. So maybe if this is 30, it finds one outside of town that's 10 and it can go move itself and slot itself over there instead, right? So it talks about how Just how much how little money will be required in in that sort of a scenario like an Uber ride For instance that they say now would cost $10 would cost like 30 cents because it's electric which is dirt cheap It's not a it's not a gasoline fueled thing. You don't have a person driving it anymore Yep, they're talking about the the simplicity of the electric vehicle to those the the shear reduction in parts and It's it's much more basic and atomic than a vehicle ever had been before Right. Yeah, exactly. I started talking with a number of co-workers at the office and I was like, you know the first thing that I could easily see coming down the pipe before any of this that we're talking about now is just a autonomous like let's say they take the HOV lanes and make them autonomous only lanes. Suddenly now you have a lane that in theory could go a hell of a lot faster with all kinds of autonomous cars that are aware of each other and can continue at the same exact speed as each other without bouncing into anybody or anything. And suddenly that lane can haul ass whereas the rest of normal traffic can stay off to the side and be stuck because they're driving shitty gas goes on cars. Well, that'd be a nicer alternative to the current HOV. Well, the toll lanes, they told those based on demand. So you can pay a lot of money for those. You can pay $14 on a 405 for a segment, just getting up to Bellevue. Can you imagine that? Like not having to do that because it's autonomous and it's efficient. Then if you had that set up, then you could do it for free. Right. and think about how much more throughput that lane would have. 'Cause like I mentioned, you can have it, it could be much, much, much faster because, I mean, without the exception of turns, like obviously turns, you can only go at a certain speed, but on straightaways, whatever is the limit, 'cause the cars are gonna continue to maintain a specific distance from each other. They're not gonna make any rash moves unless a regular non-autonomous vehicle makes some weird move that causes a problem. But beyond that, they're just gonna all travel as a pack and a group together at a very high rate of speed and much more than you could have manual drivers. - Yeah, and then the communication time, it's really low latency. So now within a matter of microseconds maybe, - Yep. - The vehicles are already communicating to each other what's happening and what they need to do to react to conditions on the road or what's coming up. - And it almost becomes like the best example I can think of right now off the top of my head like little baby elephants that are, you know, the one guy has the trunks or the tail of the next one in front of it and the one in front of that and the one in front of that and so forth. And so these cars are just kind of staying at an exact even distance from each other and just all traveling, looking like they're almost connected. But yeah, you'd get amazing throughput on that. I think that would be a huge, I think that would be a huge win and something that people would really be, People would really jump on the autonomous train if they had that ability and they would see something like that working. I agree it's something that. Once people have the experience of it i think will be more open to it right now a lot of the conversation is more fear. Fear based is what i hear about having driverless cars on the road so i think it's gonna take a little time to prove itself out people can see. and experience driving in one or riding in one. And I think it'll become over time, it'll become the preferable route. Like you said, you're going to need to have incentives like taking the HOV lane all driverless. Well, if you can get there in half the time, then people will get over their fears pretty quickly because we just want to get there, right? -Yeah. And I tell people this a lot. I'm like, I hear this all the time. Oh, I like driving. I want to drive and well, you know, sometimes I like driving too like it's enjoyable every once in a while But I think once people are able to just sit down in a in a room or a vehicle Whatever it is and just sit there and look at their phone read the paper Do a crossword do whatever the hell they want to do I think they're going to change their tune pretty quick and realize that oh I can Dick around for 20 minutes and be at my destination instead of having to Turn this wheel and push these pedals. I think about it'll change people will change their mind really quite really rapidly Well, absolutely. I enjoy driving sometimes as well But then more and more I get frustrated at the experience because I'm stuck in traffic I and a lot of times I just need to be somewhere. I got to get to the airport. I got to get to the meeting whatever it is and There's a way to multitask that I Would take it for me the driving piece is something that I would like to do in my free time I'm like, "Oh, I have an afternoon. I'm gonna go cruise or go, if I'm in a more rural place where there isn't traffic, then sure, that would be fine. I don't mind driving down the coast 'cause it's scenic, but I wouldn't mind doing it as a passenger either if I had like this, the picture of this thing that you're showing me here is really a box of glass on wheels. That would be pretty damn awesome just to be hitting it on a couch, watching out the window. - It's amazing, yeah. And to give you another example, in your, in your neighborhood, in San Francisco, where people commute crazy distances, you know, they're commuting an hour and a half, two hours each way. I mean, what if you could hop in one of these rooms that's an office and bam, you're working. During your two hour commute, that is work time, not lost time. Could be time when you're actually focused on something instead of being distracted or interrupted. I mean, it could be even like actual on the clock time, like all of a sudden four hours of your day recovered because now your commute is paid time as opposed to just time and traffic. I mean, that's another huge incentive. So agreed. Well, it'll be interesting to see how these converge because there's also other technology in there like the hyperloop, which is gaining momentum. So it's a similar deal, but well, you could still have the same scenario. It could be a two-hour commute, but this time you're going coast to coast. Right. The other thing that I thought fascinating about this was just the concept of money, as I mentioned earlier, because they start to get into the, you know, everybody's biggest complaint with autonomy is that we're automating our way out of jobs, which is extraordinarily true. But what also this article starts to mention is just because of the lower cost of everything, like the sheer reduction in cost, you wouldn't need near the amount of money that we make in today's society. So even though jobs are lost, it may not be that dangerous because the sheer reduction in prices of goods and services would potentially help offset a lot of that. It's such a gain and efficiency that everything comes down, prices come down. Right. I don't know. I'll link to the article. It's a fascinating read. It really opened my eyes to, you know, obviously this is well down the road, but what is possible even beyond autonomous cars, and that even autonomous cars is just kind of a short-sighted idea, I guess. This is tangentially related, but that image that you have in this article, It shows that cool looking work on wheels thing That's right down the street from my place. I've been to serpentine That's her. Oh, is it really there's a restaurant serpentine in the background. That's right down on 3rd Street in dog patch Yeah, it's pretty cool. Actually, it's a really good place Nice There you go. So I could I didn't see that work on wheels thing when I was down there last time So that'd be kind of fun to run into that Yeah, and then the image below that you see is just like the drivetrain for these things right It's just a very simple platform that you can put like any kind of container on top of so You just swap them out right and then oh and one other kind of quick note about this regarding cost is they start to talk about Cost of the actual drivetrain itself so whoever owns the drivetrain Obviously has debt against it and so the drivetrain itself As it takes trips and that sort of thing and helps, you know, maybe it's rented out to people Whatever the scenario may be it's it eventually pays for itself and because it's autonomous and again because it's smart It can start to lower its prices that it charges to do various things if you assuming you're renting it out or letting other people use it So that it's kind of really just paying for maintenance at that point. So These things just become insanely smart and and pretty cost effective pretty quickly Wicked times buddy. This is some crazy shit It is all right going from the real high tech to the real low tech. Oh, yeah Today I discovered Peak design comm which as a photographer personally, I'm a photographer. Well amateur photographer I've had a few paying gigs, but I'm still amateur. I found these guys Today and I don't know how the fuck I didn't know about them to begin with because they make some really fucking cool products What is this shit? I'm looking right now. It looks like a looks like a Wings looks like some wings come flying out of these backpacks. Is it a flying pack? So yeah, so Pete designs makes a whole lot of gear for photographers primarily is their audience This particular product is the everyday backpack which actually has been around I think since about 2016 The reason I bring it up on this show is I was looking at some of the products released at CES and Although this was not released at CES one of the guys that was writing a review actually bought one of these just prior to going and He mentioned that this was his favorite product that he had around CES So basically the product itself is a backpack. They do have a couple different models They have the backpack they have a tote and they have what they call a sling This particular model the backpack though has two side compartments, which you're referring to as wings. Yes Yep, and so those give you access to kind of the main body compartment of the backpack itself and then inside there there's removable segmenters, I guess maybe you would call them so for photographers you can take and make multiple different places to put your camera body or your lenses or even other particular items like there was a review I was watching today and he even put his drone in there at some point and These little dividers are highly configurable. So if you look through the images, there's one where it's a very large lens laying on its side. There's one where it's kind of divided and there's a lens and a camera. And you can move that little divider in different directions as you want. You can also even drop the divider on the side so that it's like a vertical chamber, if that makes sense. I don't know how to describe it better without. Oh, they have a photo of it, do they? I don't see that. Oh, they do actually. There's a photo where it's just the dividers. It shows the dividers and cameras and you see the one where the lens is vertical. Oh, interesting. So you can actually make it like it's a vertical chamber as opposed to a horizontal chamber. Oh, there it is. I had to click on more. I didn't see it down there. Yeah, they call it pass through, I guess. So it's highly configurable, which is really, really cool. And it fits a ton of gear for photographers. And this is something that I've been wanting for quite a long time is something that can house my camera, but maybe also my laptop, which in this case it can house up to a 15-inch laptop and can house a tablet as well in another case, another compartment that is accessible through the top. That is sweet, man. I know this is cool. I'm still looking at some of these other photos here, sorry. So a couple of the other features that are really pretty amazing on this is, number one, the actual latch fixture that closes the top lid is actually a magnetic hook So when you look at the pictures of it, there's one two three four, I think of the latch it latch points So it'll actually allow the bag to compress vertically up or down Depending upon how much gear you have in the bag Which is really really slick and then it has a magnetic latch that apparently is pretty tough from what people were saying all the zippers have kind of Finger loops, I guess or whatever you call those finger pulls But those can also be latched into the bag. There's a mechanism that they can be secured effectively for security so that somebody can't just unzip it from behind you and rip out all your gear or something like that. So those can be secured. It has a hidden waist strap. So you unzip a little pouch and out comes this waist strap. And if you would need like a hip belt or something like that, that's hidden away. But you, so you don't have to use it, but it's there if you need it. Same thing with the, I don't know what they call it, but the chest strap that kind of goes between the shoulder straps, that can be configured to either go across and keep them together, or you can just re-hook it on one of the straps so that you don't have to have it be used at all, but it kind of hides itself away and is pretty handy. This is great. Yeah, it's a pretty amazing bag. All the points where the straps connect to the bag, So like the shoulder straps, any points that they connect to the actual backpack, they're on like these circular hinges so that they can flex and move pretty easily rather than it being sewn in. So I think that's a pretty, pretty cool feature that I don't think I've ever seen in a backpack. No. Oh, one of the other cool things is so if you, if you think of having the backpack like on your back as a normal everyday wearing and then like, let's say you unhook one shoulder and then kind of sling it around your body so that it's sitting in front of you, but it's still on one shoulder. Yes. They engineered it intentionally so that it could do that. And then once you've got it in that kind of position, so it's almost, uh, horizontal across to your, your front, you now have like this access perfectly to the, to the zipper. So they even show it in some of the photos where he's got it unzipped and now he has access to all the contents that are in those slots that you've kind of pre divided in the main body compartment. Oh yeah, there it is. Just opens like a lid, flips up. Yep. Yeah. I don't know, I found this today and I was really, really pumped by this because, oh, and then another cool thing is in the back. So it has a, you know, a brace piece on the back so that it kind of keeps it off of your back so it doesn't get super sweaty. But that also doubles as a piece that you can put the backpack through like your luggage handle, which is a little bit hard to describe via audio. But for traveling purposes, like if you have a rolly luggage, you can like slide the backpack down onto the handle. And that way it can't move or fall off or whatever. And it's kind of helpful for traveling purposes. But yeah, super amazing backpack. It's a little pricey, definitely in the vein of premium products. I think it begins at like 260, I want to say. - Yeah, 259.95. - Yeah, for the smaller version. And then I think it's an additional 30 for the 30 liter version. But yeah, these guys make some really, really killer products their reviews are pretty much all amazing. Like I don't think they hardly have any one or two stars at all. These guys look like they must be in the Bay Area. I saw a Clipper card in one of the side pockets over there. I think you're right. I think they are. Maybe we should pimp them and maybe I can get myself a demo to review on the show. Hey, that'd be sweet, man. Let's give them, would you already mentioned their website? That's worth a couple of backpacks right there, I think. right? That's peekdesign.com. If you're a photographer, check them out. The reason that they actually came to my attention is this weekend I actually hiked with our good friend, Tarifkin. That'd be Aaron Rifkin up to the top of Mailbox Peak here in Washington State. And when we got to the top, there was a guy that had a backpack on and he had this clip that was attached to the front of one of the shoulder straps. And on the clip was hanging his DSLR camera. So if you go up to products and you go down to clips on this website and click on capture. There we go. New. Yep. Here we go. Yeah. So what it is is it's basically amounts to your tripod mount on your camera and then you can mount the other piece to any kind of strap you want. Doesn't have to be a backpack, could be anything. And then if it it effectively lets you slot your camera into the whatever it is that you've mounted the bracket onto. Damn. In his case, it was on his backpack. And I was like, "Oh man, that's awesome. I definitely need to get one of those." Yeah. I see it right now. It's kind of a little holster on your shoulder strap and then you can just get up and go. Yep. A lot of people use it on their belt or yeah, they show it on some people's backpacks or you could use it in a variety of ways. But I could definitely see myself using that a lot for hiking and backpacking and even traveling. we travel, it'd be nice to just have that thing hooked up somewhere like that and not have to have a strap all the time. That looks amazing. Yeah, I can't wait for you to get your hands on. What color are you going to get? Oh, I don't know. Options. Probably, I thought they had one that was kind of a reddish color, but maybe that's the older one. I don't know. Hard to say. I'm sorry. I'm just a little caught up in this thing right now. I got pretty caught up in their products today and actually, Wayland, our co-worker, who's big into photography got looking into this as well. And he's very, very interested in that backpack and a number of these products as well. Like I said, I was kind of amazed that I don't know about this brand already being that I do a lot of photography. I kind of am annoyed that I don't but I'm glad that I found them now. Wow. Yeah, this is really good stuff. Well thought out. You can tell that they put a lot of practice into it too. It wasn't just some concept but the photos are really nice. I'm not even a photography guy, but I think it looks great. So I already told Christina that there may be a backpack purchase here in my near future. Well it's the low low price. Want to just get one more wedding and you can probably justify that. Yeah, there you go. They go for these days. So yeah, premium products, cool shit. I'm really excited about them. I probably will actually end up getting the camera strap as well. camera straps are really cool because they kind of, so if you go back into their products again and go to the slide. Alright, there it is on the right, okay. And then you'll have to blow up one of the images where it kind of shows how it connects. So it kind of connects via a strap and then this little kind of disc interface. Oh, I see it there, little eyelid that slides in. Yep, so you can kind of take off and put back on the strap really, really easily and you You can even kind of double the, like a tripod mount, even with that strap still attached, which is kind of nice because I can't do that now. Mine actually completely covers the tripod mount hole, so I can only do one or the other, whereas this can kind of have both at the same time, which is pretty cool. Yeah, I might be ordering a lot of products from these guys. Wow. Yeah, these are slick. I'm all about premium products. This could become the premium products codecast. It's kind of going that way, isn't it? I don't know why we keep coding it. There's not a lot of code in it. It could be the coffee and premium products cast. Coffee and expensive shit cast. Yeah, yeah, coffee. Coffee can be expensive shit. Speaking of coffee, have you tried out the new blonde? I know Starbucks is kind of, you know, you can argue how premium Starbucks is or isn't, but they have the new blonde espresso. Yeah, I have not had a chance to try that yet. What are your thoughts on it? I liked it. I liked it a lot. I had the Blonde Americano a couple times already. And for me, it was just a little softer, a little lighter. A little less bitter, I would imagine. It was. Yeah, it was smooth. It was easy. Is there a price difference between the typical espresso roast and the Blonde? I did not see a difference there. I think they're both the same. I think the Grande Americano is around $2.95 with tax and I believe it was the same price for either one. Yep. Okay. Yeah, I'll have to give it a shot. I was in there a couple of days ago and almost decided to pull the trigger, but I don't know, I thought for some reason it was quite a bit more expensive and I was like, "Eh, maybe not, but maybe I'll give it a shot." Some of their other stuff might be, I stick the Americano, it's a little more on the lower end of the price point there. Although we do have some other, we have some great roasters up here. Phil's coffee is huge up in San Francisco here and I, I, man, it's amazing stuff. Well, you'll have to bring back a little bag of beans to the Seattle area so that we can test it out. I'll bring them back. That's a bag worth bringing. I did bring some back for my, my housemate last time. I usually, I usually bring some back every time I come back, stay in there. But the ones I brought last time were fucking awesome. They were the Philharmonic Soul. It was a hazelnut and chocolate. That sounds real good damn. It was good. Oh Crushed it. I think I'd coffee in every morning and every night. I was there think I would be too Cool, man. Where are we out on this fucking thing here? We're at an hour already. Wow Talking a lot of shit today. It's a good episode though. I think it's I think it's been good. I've been interesting topics and I Think I think people will like it. I'm interested. I didn't hear about any of this stuff If this is, I gotta give you credit, you put most of this together today and I'm having fun looking at these links here. I'm not doing a lot of talking because I'm burying the photos over here. - So yeah, next up on the docket is, I don't even know how the hell you pronounce these guys. Lish-tot, I don't know. But they came out with a product at CES called the Test Drop, which is a electronic device that is able to Basically tell you if water is safe to drink. How the fuck does that work? So the way that it's supposed to work in theory is that it puts out an electric field or rather it detects electric fields that are coming from water or from contaminants in the water and it's able to decipher the differences between the electric fields. Wow, that's impressive. This thing looks like a little key fob. Yeah, that's right. And he just kind of runs it alongside the glass and is able to quickly detect with like a red light or a green light, whether it's drinkable or not drinkable. And it's supposed to work. I think the way that they described it is they did a demo and they poured contaminants in one of the glasses, for instance, and used this to test it. And sure enough, it was able to pick it up with no problem. So to the visual eye, it seems to work, whether or not it's foolproof or how foolproof it actually is, is still up for debate. But regardless, that's a pretty amazing thing if it indeed does what it says it does. Wow. 50 bucks, $35 at the CES discount. Da-da-da-da, oh, this is so-- Comes with an app, reports itself to an app so you can get history on all your scans. We should go take this out. We should take a little trip up to Detroit and test some water and see what comes up on the app over here, man. Just blows it up immediately. (imitates explosion) (laughs) That's right, exactly. (laughing) Son of a bitch. So yeah, not a ton to talk about here. I think in the terms of like the importance of this product, I think this has a potentially huge impact worldwide because obviously not everybody has access to good drinking water, you know, whether it be Detroit or whether it be third world countries or people in crisis zones or whatever the scenario may be, this could be used in so many different ways. So I think it's a pretty awesome product. I hope they can deliver on their promise. And I think even for me as a hiker who sometimes I can't carry in all the water that I need, actually a lot of times I can't. This would be a handy little tool where I could make sure that my water isn't contaminated with some horrible stuff. Yeah. If you're out on the, out with your camera backpack out in the wilderness and you need to grab some refill the water bottle, refill the old Nalgene out there. That's right. And you left your smart straw at home. And you can just give us a quick scan. forgot about the smart straw. Well, this will tell you if the smart straw needs to filter anything out. That's right. Exactly. Give it a test before you do that. Cool product. Hey, and that ties really well into the next product because the next product is all about a hopper or for most of you, a toilet. The loo. And you know, if you drink, if you drink some bad water, maybe you're going to be spending a lot of time on said hopper. Well, or yeah, or you could just dump the shit down the down there instead. (laughing) So, at CES, among all the smart things that they are unveiling, one was a smart toilet. So, what the hell can you do with a smart toilet? Well, let me tell you, you get a nice heated foot rest. So, your feet aren't cold while you're sitting on the hopper. So, that's a bonus. - This is crazy. I mean, this is a ridiculous, I saw this shit. This thing costs like 7,000 bucks, doesn't it? I saw pricing on this somewhere. I don't think I saw any pricing on it. Yeah, it's fucking stupid, expensive. It's the Numy Intelligent Toilet. Comes with a sensor that knows you're approaching and automatically offers up a foot warmer. It warms up the seat for you. Gives you some ambient lighting because you know, you gotta be in the mood to poop. (laughing) I mean, it's the epitome of, like just because you can do it 'cause you can and it's 'cause for CES. - Yep. Oh, it also plays music. So, you know, it'll get things moving for you. - It looks cool. I would never spend, I wouldn't spend more than when I would pay for a normal toilet to be honest with you, man. This is crazy. - I just thought it was more entertaining than anything. It's, yeah, to your point, it's like the most ridiculous product I think I read about from CES. - Wow. Yeah. It's, CES is a lot of fun, but it also brings up a lot of this kind of stuff where it's just a nonsensical kind of shit, you know? Literally, I like Kohler, I like their stuff. They have some really cool things. I mean, what I see here is just, it's like a car that has all the electronics. You're just gonna spend thousands and thousands of dollars maintaining it. Like the hydraulic arm on the toilet lifts back when you show up and yeah, it's very ridiculous. - There'll be somebody that does that though. I mean, there's certainly somebody that there's a market for it. You know, somebody will want it. Crazy, dude. I don't know. I like your backpack the best. I think it takes the, the, the water one is cool. It's good. It actually has a practical application and I like products that come out of CES that have more of a practical use. Yeah. And to be fair, the backpack did not come out of CES. That was a, that's a two year old product at this point or a year and a half. But it's holding up well, obviously. I mean, it's still, still very applicable. I'm excited for you to get it, dude. We're gonna have to swap some product next time we get together or whenever you get yours, 'cause I've got my new laptop now and bring that out. My backpack will be about a pound and a half lighter now that I don't have that old doorstop sitting in there anymore. - Yeah, I'm excited to see this thing and see what the dimensions and see what it feels like and that sort of thing. And I'm interested in seeing a Hackintosh. You'll always hear about them, but I've never seen one running. - It was very easy. I've done that before when they first came out on the Intel platform and it was a lot more work. This was very straightforward. I think within 30 minutes I had the damn thing running. So it was very easy to do. - Very good. Well, do we wanna do some teasers for next week or do we have any idea what the hell we're gonna be talking about? - I don't know what the hell we're gonna talk about. I kinda slacked on this one. I was traveling and then got caught up with the new laptop. I think I need to, I don't have anything that I know about that I want to talk about right now. We're going to keep it open, I think. All right, well. It will be a mystery meat. Mystery meat. I don't know. I don't know. I was trying to make something up. It'll be a mystery. It'll be, you know, it'll be-- we'll keep you in suspense until next time. Well, that's all by itself. Yeah, exactly. It could be anything. It could be products. It could be storytelling. It could be code, actually. Wouldn't that be a shock if we actually We're going to talk about some code. We're going to talk about... Don't get crazy now. We're going to talk about IDEs in our developer toolbox roundup. We could go back to that. Hey, there you go. Let's get back to the roundup. Yeah. Next week we'll do the roundup. Did you change your Twitter handle? I did, actually, yes. Well, then we should throw that out there. So, obviously, you can follow the CoffeeCodeCast at @coffeecodecast on Twitter. Has now changed his Twitter to @chipperSF Yes, I am @KyleP Johnson on Twitter and hey use hashtag Ask3C if you have anything you want us to talk about or Use hashtag how I dev if you want to follow up with the how I did segment we did with mr. Joseph Bolli That's right. Your environment your favorite beverages playlists Hardware and more yeah as always you can Contact us at coffeecodecast@gmail.com via the correctly working website www.coffeecodecast.com and of course subscribe and rate us and You know let us know you're out there on all the the publishing platforms We have iTunes, Stitcher, SoundCloud, Google Play, tune in All the stuff everywhere. We're everywhere Everywhere even in shithole countries shit hole So I guess we can just say that's a wrap for episode number 11 and today we're not gonna have a post show so If you want to listen to our Kick-ass theme music feel free to hang around otherwise. We'll catch you on episode 12.[Music] (upbeat music)