[00:00:00.00] - Gordon
Hello.
[00:00:09.13] - Taylor
Hello.
[00:00:10.02] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.
[00:00:12.01] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:00:13.26] - 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 thank you so much for joining us.
[00:00:24.26] - Taylor
Welcome back.
[00:00:25.18] - Gordon
As always, it's been a busy week. And I have to say, of all the seasons that we've done, apart from the first season where we were on lockdown and we were here all the time, I think this year we've probably got the most number of episodes. There were a lot of missed episodes due to illness or being away or you going on your twelve months of coffee.
[00:00:49.03] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:00:49.20] - Gordon
But this year, I feel like we've done more episodes than we have in past years. Does that feel the same to you?
[00:00:56.04] - Taylor
I mean, probably. We can always have a look and see.
[00:00:58.28] - Gordon
Well, yes. We were going to do some stats at one point on the website. That hasn't happened yet. So if you want to see the stats, then leave a comment on YouTube underneath here, and that might just push us forward to get it done. Right, let's get straight into our topics. You can go first today.
[00:01:18.08] - Taylor
So this week I want to talk about Wispr Flow. So that's spelled W-I-S-P-R, and then the word flow. So, Wispr Flow is something that I came across when I came up with an idea and was looking to see if something existed out there. Wispr Flow allows you to essentially use dictation for typing.
[00:01:40.04] - Gordon
Okay.
[00:01:41.07] - Taylor
So whenever I am writing emails or I'm talking to people, I have it in my head what I want to say, and I find it's a lot easier to just speak and say what I'm thinking rather than trying to put it into words. I'm much faster and I can free flow what I'm trying to say. And it essentially does this by allowing you to hit or hold the FN key, and a little bar at the bottom comes up and basically shows your transcription. So it will start transcribing as you're talking. Now, this isn't anything really new. Apple have their own dictation or 'speech to text,' but it's not that good. The Wispr Flow actually uses AI under the hood to try and and take out ums and ahs, take out repeated words, but it also has smart formatting. So if you are in an email app, it will use proper sentences; it will use proper grammar; it will make sure that the wording and the overall text is formal because that's most likely what you need in an email. If you say, for example, I need to buy from the shops an apple, banana, and pear, it will actually try and format it as a list and actually output it as a list rather than just as a commas.
[00:03:09.17] - Taylor
And it also is context-aware whether you're in a messaging app. So if you're in Slack, it's not going to be as formal. It's going to be a bit more chill, bit more casual. If you say @ a person, so say you're in Slack and you say, "Hey, did you get the documents over to me? And can you also ping at and then at Johanna about it once you've done that?" It will actually be smart enough to go, "Okay, well, and that's probably trying to reference somebody. And because I'm in Slack, I'm going to try and @ her." When it pastes, it tries to link it. And it's really, really helpful and really nice because I can very quickly reply to people, both in emails, in messages, and just get my ideas down onto paper, or to the computer, a lot faster than I could type it. Have you ever done anything like that, or do you think it would be useful for you?
[00:04:08.24] - Gordon
Yeah, possibly. I mean, this is actually what Apple Intelligence was supposed to be at this point. Apple Intelligence was touted as this clever AI that would listen to you and transcribe things, but also it would know about everything on your computer. So it would know about emails, it would know about the apps that you use. And if you said, "Can I see my mum on Tuesday next week?" It would know to go to your email and check to see where you are and to see if you could get to your mum because it knows where your mum lives. But none of this has actually happened yet. It's still on the horizon. It should have happened by now, but it hasn't. And I think once you get to that sort of situation, then AI becomes sort of second nature, and it's like a Star Trek type thing where they used to talk to the computer and get it to do things. But yeah, I like the idea of this. I have something called Pismo, which is similar, not quite the same, but similar. And I also have something called Mac Whisper, which I think because it's using the word whisper, I think Whisper is a technology from one of the AI companies that does voice transcribing, which is why the "Whisper" part is part of your product name as well.
[00:05:31.11] - Taylor
So this doesn't actually control anything on your computer. It's just listening to the microphone and transcribing. It also has an iOS app. So again, it's quite nice when I'm on the go. I use the actual, I use the Apple built-in speech to text a lot, but I also always find that it's not very smart. A lot of the time it won't pick up the right words or because it transcribes in real time, it actually adds every word as you're saying it, it sometimes can't get the right context or because it's already put the word down into the window, the message window, that it can't go back and actually revise it. If you've said the word twice or if you miss said something, if you wanted to correct yourself, the AI would be smart enough to go, "Okay, well, he said kind of the same thing twice, but obviously, I'm guessing he meant the second phrase rather than the first one." And yeah, it's just been really handy. The only thing I have found is that because I use my computer in clamshell mode and connect it to a monitor, I can't use the microphone from my laptop.
[00:06:38.25] - Gordon
You have to crack it open just a little bit.
[00:06:40.22] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:06:41.11] - Gordon
Or plug a microphone in, I guess.
[00:06:42.23] - Taylor
Yeah. So if I decide to start using this a lot more, I'm currently on the trial, then I'll most likely just plug in a microphone at my desk and make sure that I can always just use the microphone. But it's very, very clear. It picks up, at least on the MacBook microphone built in, it does a really, really good job of picking up your voice.
[00:07:02.09] - Gordon
And I think that's the point, isn't it? The better the microphone, the clearer the sound going into the computer, and therefore, the more accurate it can be.
[00:07:12.04] - Taylor
Yeah, I was watching some of their demos and documentation videos and people who had basically not complained, but said, "how do I use this in an office? Because it's so noisy and also I don't want people to hear me as I'm talking." And they said to get this Tannoy, little small Tannoy desk microphone, and you can literally just put it right to your mouth and you can whisper into it. And because of how sensitive it is and how close to your mouth it is, it picks it up perfectly without missing a word.
[00:07:44.20] - Gordon
And we use a microphone here. We're not using the computer's mic. I'm not sure if this is going to make a noise, but I'm going to lift it up so that those who are watching can see. This is the microphone we have with a little filter on the front to stop any explosive sounds. And that's a Logitech mic.
[00:08:05.22] - Taylor
Elgato.
[00:08:06.10] - Gordon
Elgato, I'm so sorry. Elgato mic.
[00:08:08.11] - Taylor
The Elgato Wavelink.
[00:08:09.17] - Gordon
Which is really good, actually, isn't it? I mean, we just put it here and Taylor talks quieter than me, so it's nearer to him. So therefore it picks up everything. And hopefully you can hear us nice and clearly.
[00:08:22.10] - Taylor
Yeah, it's a really nice microphone. Elgato have a really nice low boom arm. Most boom arms, they attach, clamp to the desk and they go up and then down again. You can then pull it in and out. The Elgato one, I believe, is a flat. So you put it at the back of the desk or the side and it stacks two of them on top of each other. So you can't change the height, but you can swivel it out and you can obviously pivot it to come closer or go back. And it takes up a lot less space and it's also a lot lower, so it's not in the way.
[00:09:00.22] - Gordon
Very good. So just remind us the app that you're using and tell us a little bit about whether it's paid or not paid.
[00:09:06.26] - Taylor
So it's called Wispr Flow, W-I-S-P-R, and I believe they have a free account or free version with a certain number of... I think they use words, a certain number of words you can use per month. And then there's a paid version which obviously increases the limits.
[00:09:27.19] - Gordon
What are you on currently?
[00:09:29.03] - Taylor
I'm just on the trial version.
[00:09:30.10] - Gordon
Testing it out.
[00:09:30.16] - Taylor
Just giving it a go, seeing if I like it. I think if I decide to go forward, I will need to get a microphone because I use my laptop in clamshell mode most of the time. But yeah, I find it really, really handy the fact I can just hold the FN key down, speak, and then release. You can hold, press FN and space, and that then makes it hands free, and you can then speak for a bit longer. But just holding the FN key, you can say a couple of words and then release, and it just pastes it straight in.
[00:09:58.06] - Gordon
Yeah, that's very good, because with the Apple Siri transcribing, you have to double tap on the function key, talk, and then you have to press the function key again or escape to stop it.
[00:10:09.06] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:10:09.19] - Gordon
That's very good. Well done. Anything that can speed up your day, really, isn't it? Your workflow. So something that might take you 10 minutes to write an email, you can probably do in half the time now.
[00:10:21.06] - Taylor
Yeah, exactly. And it's also, you reduce the amount you're typing. So you're reducing the amount of strain on your wrist.
[00:10:29.06] - Gordon
And wear and tear on your computer.
[00:10:31.04] - Taylor
And also just sometimes it's harder to put into words what you're trying to say.
[00:10:36.10] - Gordon
Yeah, very good. So if you are interested in that, go and have a look. Is it available for Mac and PC?
[00:10:43.28] - Taylor
I don't know about PC. I know it's for Mac and iOS.
[00:10:46.21] - Gordon
Okay.
[00:10:47.08] - Taylor
I think they may have Windows or they are working on a Windows version, something like that. I'm not sure.
[00:10:54.09] - Gordon
But we'll put a link to it in the show notes and then you can go and have a look. My topic for today is still getting excited about things that happen. So just recently, I've been doing a couple of things outside of work, things that I like to do and enjoy. I've spoken about both of them many times here. One of them is 3D printing, and the other one is Home Assistant, which Taylor is getting into as well now. He shall be moving out very shortly into his own place, and he's going to get Home Assistant, start over from scratch. And it's quite a good time for him to do this because I've spent quite a lot of time recently working on Home Assistant and figuring out the best way to do things that suits me. And it may not suit Taylor, but at least I can pass on that information to him and that experience, and he will then be able to build it from scratch with that in the back of his mind. And it's a matter of doing something and failing, and then working on it and doing it again and doing it again until you figure out why it failed, fixing that problem, and then the excitement when it actually comes good.
[00:12:14.23] - Taylor
And making sure you save your changes.
[00:12:17.10] - Gordon
And making sure, yes, something I didn't do the other day, which is why he mentioned it. But if we look at the 3D printer, first of all, I've got quite a big collection now of filament. Filament is the plastic that goes into the printer that it melts and then makes a new object with. And it comes on one kilogram spools, and I've got quite a few of them now. And the thing is that you want to try and keep them in a good condition, and you want to try and keep them away from moisture because moisture is not good for them. So one of the things I had was I had these food-grade bags that I was putting them into and then vacuum sealing them. And that was a great idea. Problem is the vacuum sealer I bought was quite a cheap one and just wasn't really up to the task of these big kilogram spools. And I found that more often than not, they would be pierced or they would lose their suction at some point in the next couple of days. And then you'd end up with a bag which wasn't air tight.
[00:13:25.11] - Gordon
So I purchased a new one, a bigger one, which now does a double strip when it seals it, which is great because that's a lot more hard wearing. And the suction is a lot more powerful, so it gets more air out. And I also found a little clip that I had in there which was perforating some of the plastic, which wasn't helpful. So I managed to figure that out, get rid of that, and that solved that problem. And now all of my bags, bar one, which I know because I managed to pierce it myself by mistake, are fully sealed when they're not being used, which is great. And I was really excited about that, because the idea was good and just it wasn't working. So just changing how we did something has now fixed that problem. The other problem I had with the 3D printer was trying to print a particular model, and this model had lots of little parallelograms that were all separate, that it was printing on the print bed. And the first layer, if you know anything about 3D printing, the first layer is the most important because that pretty much will tell you if your model is going to fail or not.
[00:14:38.10] - Gordon
Because it's all about bed adhesion. You want to make sure that the bed, which is what it's printing onto, is hot enough for it to keep the material on it and stuck on it by heat so that it doesn't peel off. Because as soon as it starts peeling, then it warps and the print doesn't happen right, and the print head can knock it off while it's printing and it will fail. And you'll end up with spaghetti everywhere, which is when it prints in mid-air. And so getting the first layer is really important. And I was having trouble getting this first layer. I could not get it to adhere with all of these separate objects. Some of them would fail, and by that point, that's the end. You can't continue. You have to stop. You have to figure out what's going on and start again. And it turned out all I needed to do with the particular filament that I was using was to increase the bed temperature for the first layer or the first three layers, in fact, I did it for, just to keep the bed adhesion, and to slow down the printer speed. And by doing that, it became a lot more accurate. The bed temperature was holding it better, and it became a wonderful print. I printed out a soap dish for you.
[00:15:55.25] - Taylor
Yeah, it looks great.
[00:15:56.19] - Gordon
Which was the problem one that I was having because it was like you put your soap on after and it's got a little tray underneath and a bit that the soap sits on and all the water and the soap just drain through into the bottom so you can then empty that and clean it. And it was just causing me so many problems. And when I figured it out, yay, I was excited again. I was really excited. And the last thing that I've been excited about recently is the Home Assistant and some of the automations that I've been putting in place, which are things that are going to make my life easier and better. So for example, I now have on the people who are staying living at this house, which is not Taylor, he's moving out. We've now got a system so that the house knows if you're at home or not based on if you've got your mobile device with you. And if you're not here, then it doesn't need to heat the office, for me.
[00:16:56.22] - Gordon
If I'm not here, it doesn't need to heat the office because I'm not here. So I can have the heating in the office cut off when I leave the house. And when I get back, it can turn it back on again. So I'm saving money from fuel and heating a room that's not needed. Same goes with my partner's dad, who stays with us half the time. When he's not here, well, we don't need to heat his room. We need to make sure the pipes are keeping a little bit warm so they're not going to freeze in the cold months. But we don't want the heating on full blast because there's no point. He's not going to be there. It's a waste of fuel. And then there's all sorts of other things you can do. I've now got it so that when, and this is something I'm testing currently, but when someone gets home, the system knows. And so it knows that when the next door is opened, because I have door sensors, it's likely to be them. So when that door is opened, it will say, "Welcome home, Gordon," which is really nice. It's that sort of thing.
[00:17:55.08] - Gordon
And I've got it now so I can talk to Alexa and say "goodbye," and it will automatically set the house alarm on and turn the office lights off so that I can then leave. And I've just done it by voice. I've got another one that says, "goodnight," and it puts a different mode of our alarm system on. So it's just the exterior doors and windows that are then alarmed and all of the sensors inside the house are not on because we're still here. And it does all that. It turns my office lights off. It turns the TVs off if they're on, because I'm normally the last one to bed. And it's little things like this that get me excited. You work on them for a little while and then all of a sudden they work, and it's, yay, moment. I don't know if we've mentioned this, but I'm using CURSOR now to do my Home Assistant programming. Is it Vibe programming, Vibe coding that you would call it?
[00:18:59.17] - Taylor
Yeah. Probably.
[00:19:00.06] - Gordon
Yeah, so basically I am using a programme called CURSOR, which is an AI-based editor in a very, very cut-down way of saying what it is. And you can give it the files, not give it the files. You can give it access to the files that you're working on. It can then look through the files, find what it needs to do what it needs to do. And it knows all the YAML and the coding that it needs. So all I need to do is to basically tell it what I want it to do. And it's got a new plan mode, which is great. I really like the plan mode, which is when it plans out what it's going to do to achieve what you want. And then you can check through the plan and go, "oh, that's not what I meant at all." And then you can change that and it will rewrite the plan. And then once you're happy with that, you can then click on "build" and it will go away and do it all for you. And then you get into debugging if you need to. But it used to have just the agent feature, which is where you would type in what you want. It would go and do it, and possibly mess up a lot of things.
[00:20:09.10] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:20:09.24] - Gordon
Which I found many times when I was building a WordPress plug-in, do you remember?
[00:20:16.20] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:20:17.04] - Gordon
And I was getting very confused and very annoyed because the bits that were working were then not working when the new bits were added, and it got into a big pain and code issues everywhere, and it was not fun. So this plan mode is brilliant. Now, this is a paid application, but I really like it, and it seems to know all about WordPress plug-ins. It knows about JavaScript, it knows about Home Assistant, it It knows all the major programming languages, CSS, all this thing it knows about. So it's great. And it's all done by AI, and it picks the relevant AI that it thinks will be best for the job. So that is another thing that I got excited about, because when you give it the files, it now has access to it all. It can go and it can look and it can do its own research. And you haven't got to give it all this information, which takes a lot longer. So things to get excited about.
[00:21:17.12] - Gordon
Is there still things that you do that you're excited about? If not, find something that is going to bring that excitement to you because you need a bit of happiness in your life. And if you don't do a fun job like I do, but if you don't do a fun job, then at least find something that brings you excitement. And I think part of it is once you've worked on something for a while and then it starts working and it's all fixed and sorted, that's where the excitement happens because you put a little bit of time and effort into it and you've failed a couple of times. And only by failing, does the excitement mean anything. Otherwise, everything just happens the first time. That's everything I want to say about that. Do you want to add anything?
[00:22:08.11] - Taylor
I mean, your point about find something that excites you, it sounds like the thing that excites you is problem solving.
[00:22:18.20] - Gordon
I guess it is. Yeah.
[00:22:19.28] - Taylor
That's what excites you is having a problem and being able to solve it and finding a solution to it, which is why we got into the industry that we got into.
[00:22:31.08] - Gordon
And magic as well. That's all about problems and finding solutions. And when you're building your new routines, for example, that's all part of problem solving as well. That's it from me.
[00:22:44.03] - Taylor
And me as well.
[00:22:44.29] - Gordon
Thank you so much for joining us. If you have enjoyed this, then please like, share and subscribe on YouTube.
[00:22:51.22] - Taylor
You can also go to our website thisweekwith.co.uk and find all of our past episodes and anything we may have spoken about.
[00:22:58.23] - Gordon
And if you would prefer to listen to us instead of watch us, then we're on all of the major podcast platforms and also your smart speaker, just do a search for "This Week With Taylor and Gordon," and it will play the latest episode for you. All being well, we'll be back with you at 1pm next Friday. Until then, my name is Gordon, and I'm from Drayson Design.
[00:23:20.29] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:23:23.07] - Gordon
Goodbye.
[00:23:23.22] - Taylor
Bye.
