[00:00:09.180] - Gordon
Hello. My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.
[00:00:11.480] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:00:13.630] - Gordon
And welcome to "This Week with Taylor and Gordon," a weekly podcast and vidcast where we talk about things that have affected our businesses over the last seven days. And welcome back. We apologise for not being with you last week. Life got in the way, really, didn't it?
[00:00:30.250] - Taylor
Yeah. So we had Jonathan or Permaslug. Well, he's actually rebranded himself to Jonathan now, but he is traveling around Europe and he came to London, so I got to see him. We went to see some shows and went out just exploring London and things like that and getting food. It was really nice.
[00:00:50.840] - Gordon
Yeah. And that's why we weren't available. Excuse me. [Sneezes] Pardon me. I do apologise. So yes, that's the reason why we weren't with you last week. However, lots of things have happened during this week. So first of all, some news. I am a member of the Magic Circle, as you probably already know. And on Monday, this last Monday, we had the Close Up Magician of the Year competition, which is a type of magic where you do it one to one or one to a small group of people. So it's very close up, hence the name. And it's a very prestigious award. It's one of the, probably the biggest award that the Magic Circle do. And it's a big competition. And on the last Monday when we had it, I was asked to be a judge, one of the magical judges, which is a very big honour. And I'd like to thank the Magic Circle for asking me. It was great to do it. I basically got to watch the six acts. And then there were two other very prominent magicians who were judges. And we also had some lay people. Now, we call them lay people because they're muggles, basically. So non-magical people. The audience, the type of people we perform for. And they were in the room as well. And there were two judges from that group who also got to say who they thought was the best. And then the magician judges, we were judging it on different things like the entertainment value, the magic skill, and so forth. And we had three winners. Well, we had first, second, and third, and they were all very worthy. It was very, very nice to be asked. So thank you to John Conway who asked me. And also thank you to the Magic Circle. So that's that. What other news do we have? I'm not sure there is any at the moment? We'll come back to that if I think of any. So do you want to start today?
[00:03:05.020] - Taylor
Yeah. So back in October, I went to America and I bought something called an Upright Go 2. Now, I bought this from the Apple store. It's not an Apple product, but it's one of the products they have on the shelves in their stores. And what it does, it's a posture corrector. So what happens is it has an app and it sticks onto the back of your neck. And every time you are basically slouching, it will vibrate. It doesn't vibrate as soon as you're slouching or you bend down or whatever. But after maybe 15 seconds or whatever you set it to, it will vibrate to say, "Look, you need to sit up straight." And it's a really good little tool, little gadget that I got. And I was using it for quite a while. And then the battery decided it just wasn't charging or anything like that. So I reached out to the company and said, "Look, it's not charging. Are you able to do anything?" And they sent me a brand new one, which was very nice of them. So I've been wearing that this week and realising that my posture is quite bad. When I'm walking Marty, in the mornings, I normally think I am sitting up straight, but I'm not, and it's vibrating quite a lot of the time.
[00:04:19.170] - Gordon
You're sitting up when you go walking?
[00:04:20.590] - Taylor
Well, I'm standing up straight, shall I say. And also when I'm sitting at my desk as well, it vibrates when I'm hunched over and I'm not sitting in my chair properly as I should. And it's a good reminder. And it should be one of those gadgets that you don't really need for a long time because obviously, once you've corrected your posture, you shouldn't need it. And if it's not vibrating at all for a week or so, that would suggest that you have pretty good posture. But it's a nice gadget. And there's an app that tells you how long you've been sitting up straight for or standing up straight, and gives you the score and you can see, they're like the activity rings you get for your watch. And you can see each day how you're progressing, how many minutes you had good posture. Yeah, and it's quite fun.
[00:05:13.810] - Gordon
What's really funny is I'm sitting here and I can hear it vibrating while he's discussing what happens, which is really funny. So have you done some research on this? What is the benefits of having a good posture?
[00:05:27.440] - Taylor
It's probably just lots of things, health reasons.
[00:05:32.710] - Gordon
What was your main reason for purchasing it? Was it just that it was a gadget that you thought, I feel like my posture should be better?
[00:05:40.410] - Taylor
Yeah. I notice it sometimes when I'm, especially when I'm coding, I will very much hunch over my desk because just my brain is going.
[00:05:50.990] - Gordon
Your hands are down on the keyboard, aren't they?
[00:05:53.250] - Taylor
Yeah. And so I realise that I do have bad posture sometimes when I'm sitting at my desk. And I thought if I'm going to be sitting at my desk, which I do a lot, I should probably be sitting properly because it's going to help me as I get older to your age and things like that. I don't want to be having a bad back or whatever.
[00:06:12.230] - Gordon
Yeah, ancient. But you also have a standing desk. So are you using that for standing at the moment?
[00:06:20.620] - Taylor
I haven't recently, but yes, it's something that I do use every now and again when I remember.
[00:06:26.230] - Gordon
Because I know with your illness that you have, it's been difficult. But have you got to a point now where you think standing would be possible?
[00:06:36.730] - Taylor
Yeah, I enjoy standing for things like meetings, although I've been told that I make people feel seasick because I rock back and forth just because you keep yourself moving. But I have a standing mat that I sit on, which helped a lot and was one of the reasons why I couldn't stand up for long periods because standing on just carpet, I guess, isn't good for your feet.
[00:07:02.990] - Gordon
Well, solid surface, isn't it? And this mat is a bit more buoyant.
[00:07:06.080] - Taylor
Yeah, it's a bit like a memory foam mat.
[00:07:08.160] - Gordon
It's like one of those things you get in a children's playground, isn't it? So if they fall off, they don't hurt themselves.
[00:07:13.650] - Taylor
Sort of. It's a bit softer than that.
[00:07:16.100] - Gordon
A little bit like that. Yeah. So you sway backwards and forwards, do you?
[00:07:18.480] - Taylor
Yeah, or side to side. It depends.
[00:07:20.130] - Gordon
So now you need to get another sensor to stop you swaying.
[00:07:23.920] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:07:24.530] - Gordon
You're just going to have sensors all over your body.
[00:07:27.410] - Taylor
I need to get my own gimble. Keeps me balanced and upright.
[00:07:31.110] - Gordon
Keeps you upright. Perfect. So that was nice of the company, though. They saw there was an issue and sorted it out, which is what they should be doing.
[00:07:40.470] - Taylor
Yeah and they did it very very quickly. I just emailed them saying, they gave me a couple of things to try to make sure that it wasn't just user error, but then they sent one out.
[00:07:50.620] - Gordon
Very good. That's good. I think these little sensors and these little gadgets that you can get these days really improve habits, I guess, because the whole point of you having this sensor is to get you into the habit of sitting up straight. And in fact, just talking about it, I'm doing it myself now. I'm just sitting up straight. So yeah, maybe you need to get more sensors once you've worked on one part of your body, move on to the next part.
[00:08:20.240] - Taylor
Yeah. I also looked to see if they had an API. Sadly, they didn't. I would have...
[00:08:25.890] - Gordon
For your website.
[00:08:26.530] - Taylor
Yeah, I would have uploaded it to my website, but they didn't have, or they don't have any documented APIs. They probably do internally, but probably not ones they want to share with people. But one thing I have been looking at is the Aura ring.
[00:08:40.620] - Gordon
Oh, yes. Our friend Marc has one of them.
[00:08:43.740] - Taylor
And I have another friend at the gym that is looking at it. And yeah, they look really really cool. They are similar to an Apple watch. They track your sleep and things like that, and other parts, your body water, and things like that. And yeah, they can track your things. And it's just another way. It's supposed to be a lot more accurate.
[00:09:11.260] - Gordon
Yeah. And the fact that it's a ring and not a watch means you haven't got to charge it all the time as well because it's...
[00:09:18.160] - Taylor
There's no screen.
[00:09:18.910] - Gordon
There's no screen. So it takes up a lot less power and it lasts a lot longer. But it has a very specific type of charger and you need to get the right size as well as our friend of our channel, Marc Summers. He got a new charging device and couldn't remember exactly what ring he had and actually ordered the wrong size. So that was an expensive mistake. But I think he probably managed to send it back. I hope he did anyway. But yeah, I thought they were looking good as well. And they've got an API?
[00:09:54.740] - Taylor
They do, yes. I have looked at that. And they do have an API, which I could use if I wanted to.
[00:10:00.650] - Gordon
And I guess when you've got medical conditions, having these sensors and being alerted ahead of time when there's something wrong can really benefit you.
[00:10:15.140] - Taylor
Yeah, I regularly get told by my Apple watch that my resting heart rate is quite high, which isn't good. I'll be sitting down at my desk and it'll say, "your heart rate is 190 BPM." I'm like...?
[00:10:30.690] - Gordon
190 seems very high.
[00:10:31.790] - Taylor
Yeah, but it's just very high. It might not be 190, but it was very high. And I regularly, at the moment, because I'm slowly getting back into the exercise and the gym and things like that, I'm hitting 200 BPM when I'm playing tennis or whatever because...
[00:10:47.990] - Gordon
Which is only 10 more than resting when you're sitting at your computer.
[00:10:51.250] - Taylor
No, it must be 110 maybe at.
[00:10:53.820] - Gordon
Okay.
[00:10:54.720] - Taylor
Something. But yeah, I get a notification going, "you've got a high resting heart rate." I'm like "Oh, great."
[00:10:59.370] - Gordon
Right. So that's good to keep track of then.
[00:11:02.670] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:11:03.060] - Gordon
Anything else you want to say?
[00:11:04.230] - Taylor
No, that's everything from me.
[00:11:05.890] - Gordon
So for those who've listened to these podcasts or watched the vidcast before, you may notice that the sound is slightly different. Now, we did have a Samson microphone, which we used to have a stand and it went up the side here. It came across the top and sat just out of sight about here, right above us. And we used to have that going to the computer. So the sound was basically coming from the microphone, which is a higher quality sound than it would be if it was coming direct from the laptop. And after the latest OS update, the mic stopped working. It wasn't being recognized from the computer. And so we stopped using a mic. We were just using the inbuilt one from the laptop.
[00:11:55.540] - Taylor
Which was pretty good, if you think about it.
[00:11:57.240] - Gordon
It wasn't bad. It definitely wasn't as good.
[00:12:00.750] - Taylor
No, of course.
[00:12:01.490] - Gordon
But it wasn't bad. You got a lot more ambient sound from the room, which is what you would expect when you've got a laptop, which I'm not entirely sure where the microphone is, but I think it's possibly in the top of the screen, and the screen is only that thick. It's very, very thin. And so the microphone is also going to be quite small, and it's never going to be the same as a dedicated microphone. So with the podcasts that I have been recording recently, which is something that I will announce soon because it's not actually been launched yet. But I've been doing a podcast, a second podcast, not this one, a second one, and I was doing them on Zoom. And again, the sound was coming through the computer and I wasn't happy with it. It was just not as good as I want it to be, because when people are listening to podcasts, the cleaner the sound, the easier it is to listen to it and to understand what's happening. So I thought I would invest in a new microphone because the one I had before was like 2009 I think I bought, no, earlier than that. Actually, maybe early 2000s. So yeah, it's been a while since I bought that one. So I was looking around to see what there was, and there was lots of very expensive ones. And I don't mind paying for expensive microphones if they're going to do the job. But I don't want to pay for something that's very expensive when there's something a lot cheaper that will do the same job, especially when it's a podcast, because we make no money out of the podcasts. We do it because we want to do it, and we want to share our knowledge with people. And the new podcast is the same. It's not going to be earning me very much money, if anything. So I didn't want to spend lots and lots, but I did want to make sure I got good sound because quality is important. So I eventually settled on the Elgato Wave 3. Now, this is a microphone that is made by the same people as the lights I have. So I've got some Elgato lights.
[00:14:08.260] - Taylor
And they originally bought out the Elgato capture card, which is what they're most well known for.
[00:14:13.760] - Gordon
They were, yeah. And that was being used a lot by streamers, wasn't it? When you plugged it into your Xbox or your PlayStation or something, and it would then send the HDMI signal into your computer and capture it so that you could then stream. And it's one of the first companies that discovered that this was a good thing and people wanted it. And they did really well out of that.
[00:14:37.860] - Taylor
Yeah. So they've now got pretty much a whole suite of products and a line-up that all complement each other and all work together. So they've got the lights, they've got the microphone, they've got the capture card.
[00:14:49.080] - Gordon
And the stream deck, which is something I purchased during lockdown. And this is a little device with buttons on it that you can program, and they can do all sorts of things like open applications, or mute your microphone, or start scenes running in OBS if you're streaming. It's got all sorts of different functions that it can do. And so I thought, because I'm using that already, and I'm in the Elgato ecosystem, if you like, getting their microphone might give me extra benefits, like allowing me to link in with all the other things like stream deck. And sure enough, it's got a whole section on the stream deck that allows you to basically tap on different buttons and mute it or change the gain or whatever. And hopefully, it's sounding really good. This is the first time we've used it for this podcast, for This Week With. And you can't see it, but it's just down here. The one I got, I bought a couple of extras. There's a shock mount, which is good because it means if there's any vibrations on the table or the stand that's holding the microphone, they don't go through into the mic and make a really horrible sound. And the other thing we have is a pop filter, which means that it takes away all the plosives. So when you speak and you say words like pop, you've got that gush of air that comes out from making the P sound and a B sound. And it's like a metal grill that's like cross hatch, if you like. And it stops that air from coming through to the microphone to stop that. So hopefully, you're not getting any plosives and it makes it a lot easier to hear, a lot easier on the ears. And so yeah, that's one of the things that I've recently bought, upgrading my tech. The other thing I had is I've got some NAS drives. So these are big units with hard drives in them, so network area storage. And one of my drives had about 10 gigabytes, sorry, start again, 10 terabytes worth of space, which I plugged into my main computer. And anything that I needed, but I didn't need all the time, I would offload onto the network drive, and it meant I could still get to it. It wouldn't be as fast as the inbuilt hard drives, but I could still get to it anytime I needed to.
[00:17:19.880] - Taylor
Cool.
[00:17:19.880] - Gordon
And because they're network drives, there's two advantages. One is they're in a 'Raid' system. Now, Raid basically means you've got several hard drives and the data is on at least two of the hard drives in your Raid stack, which means that when, and not if, when a hard drive goes down, you don't lose any data. Because what you do is you take that drive out, you put a new drive in, it reworks itself out to make sure that all the data is on at least two drives. So that as long as you only have one drive failure at any one time, your data will always be safe, which is always a concern with hard drives because they do die. They will die at some point. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. And the other drive I have is a backup. And I've been putting my movies onto the network storage as well so that they're available for all devices in the house. So you can sit there with your iPad or your phone or sitting watching the TV with Apple TV, and you can just pull up one of the films that I've got on DVD without having to get a DVD player. We don't have a DVD player in the house anymore. Well, I have one for testing, but we don't have any actual DVD players that we use to watch films anymore. So by having this network storage and having all the films that we have on there, we can watch it at any time, which is just great. However, last week, my backup drive and my extended storage both had a drive failure, and I took the drives out. And something you may not know is if you go to... These are Seagate drives that I'm using. They're Behr 3.5 inch Satter drives. That's the tech spec of them. And if you go to Seagate's website, you can type in the serial number and it will give you the warranty information. Because these drives have a warranty of normally between three and five years.
[00:19:19.620] - Taylor
Okay.
[00:19:20.030] - Gordon
So I did that just to see if it was still in warranty. And the warranty expired in 2014.
[00:19:28.380] - Taylor
So it's quite a while ago then.
[00:19:30.000] - Gordon
Yes. So I probably got these drives in about 2009 ish, I guess, and they were two terabyte drives, and they were quite expensive at the time. In fact, you may have been with me because I seem to remember we bought them at a computer fair.
[00:19:44.650] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:19:45.140] - Gordon
Do you remember? Oh, I'm going to sneeze again. [sneezes] Pardon me. And again. [sneezes] I've been underneath the desk where there's lots of dust. I think I've inhaled some of the dust. I apologise. So yes, I think we got them at a computer fair where we used to wander around and buy behr hard drives. So I've replaced them and I've replaced them both with 4 terabyte hard drives, which has taken my storage up. So my external storage is now nearly 12 terabytes, which is great because I'm only using about six and a half at the moment. So there's lots of space available now. And the other one has gone up to about 7 terabytes ish for backups. But the price of hard drives has come down as tech becomes more common and there's more of it, the price comes down. The drives that I've got are twice the capacity of the ones I took out. And I've actually gone for IronWulf make, which is Seagate still, but they're meant for NAS drives, NAS: network area storage. They're meant for being on 24/7, basically. And they have three years worth of data recovery warranty, which I'd never heard of. But it's quite cool because if I have any issues with the drive and they fail within three years, I can send it off to Seagate and they will restore my data for me. They'll grab all the data, which is a very expensive thing to do if you ever have to do that. Never get to a point where your hard drive dies and you don't have a backup somewhere. That's just a horrible thing to do. So if you learn nothing else from listening to this podcast today, make sure you have a backup of your hard drive somewhere. Another hard drive, other storage system, in the cloud. It doesn't really matter. Just make sure that you have a backup and make sure you test that backup. Make sure it works. Nothing worse than having a backup and that backup failing. That's even worse than not having a backup.
[00:22:01.140] - Taylor
Definitely.
[00:22:02.270] - Gordon
So yes, I've been upgrading tech this week, and it's something that you should look at, something that you should bear in mind and just look at the tech that you've got and see if there's anything that... If you've got hard drives, do you have backups? Have you tested them recently? Something I don't do, but you should, is have an off-site backup. I don't do that. I don't have an off-site backup. If our internet was better, I'd probably have something like live drive, or if that's still going, where you can basically back up your computer to the cloud but... Anything you want to say about this?
[00:22:39.900] - Taylor
No, not really. I back up to Dropbox and that's about it.
[00:22:42.730] - Gordon
So you're backing up to the cloud then? Yeah, which is great. Really important. So that's it. Please let us know what the microphone sounds like, because we can't currently hear it. We won't know until we check the live recording and see how it's come out. So hopefully it sounds good. But please let us know in the comments.
[00:23:04.990] - Taylor
Okay.
[00:23:05.480] - Gordon
That's everything for me.
[00:23:06.620] - Taylor
And me as well.
[00:23:07.640] - Gordon
Thank you for joining us. As always, you can like, share, and subscribe. We're on YouTube and on Facebook.
[00:23:14.670] - Taylor
You can also go to our website thisweekwith.co.uk to find all of our past episodes.
[00:23:19.360] - Gordon
Until next week, Friday at 1pm, hopefully, assuming it all works out, we will see you then. My name is Gordon. I'm from Drayson Design.
[00:23:28.380] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:23:31.630] - Gordon
Goodbye.
[00:23:31.860] - Taylor
Bye.
