[00:00:10.520] - Gordon
Hello.
[00:00:10.880] - Taylor
Hello.
[00:00:11.390] - Gordon
My name is Gordon from Drayson Design.
[00:00:13.220] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:00:15.440] - 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 in the last seven days. So welcome. Thank you very much for joining us. Last day of April already. Which means we've been doing this over a year and we haven't got 52 episodes yet. We're very nearly there because we had a couple of weeks where we didn't have an episode, but I can't believe it's come around so quick this year.
[00:00:48.020] - Taylor
Yeah, I remember starting it. And we just said let's do it for one or two episodes and see how it goes.
[00:00:52.080] - Gordon
Yeah. And here we are a year later and we're still going strong. And tomorrow is May. So the weather is starting to get better. It's definitely brighter at night, in the mornings, isn't it?
[00:01:05.010] - Taylor
Yeah, exactly.
[00:01:06.450] - Gordon
We have a dog, so we take the dog for a walk, and it's getting to the point now where I can go out in just a jumper and not have to worry about taking my jacket as well. So, how's your week been looking? Have you done anything of interest just during the week recently?
[00:01:23.320] - Taylor
This week, I mean, I've been kind of following up with clients and kind of getting projects that kind of need to be finished. Well, I kind of need to be launched tomorrow. I'm kind of ready. It was kind of making sure the final changes are sorted and things like that.
[00:01:42.310] - Gordon
So there's one thing that you may or may not want to talk about, which is that you had a a customer who sent you an email who wanted a few sort of changes made and weren't particularly happy with what you'd originally done for them. Do you want to talk about that at all?
[00:02:01.870] - Taylor
Just that kind of what I had done wasn't, you know, what they had envisioned.
[00:02:08.630] - Gordon
And this happens from time to time, doesn't it? You find that you have a customer that doesn't, you know, isn't 100 percent happy with what you present to them, which is one of the reasons that you do mock-ups, right?
[00:02:22.660] - Taylor
Yeah, exactly. But we managed to sort it and fix it and, you know, just breaking it down and going, what's wrong here, what's wrong there? And kind of breaking it down and going through each step, making sure we kind of get it right.
[00:02:35.230] - Gordon
Which is great because sometimes communications can break down in these sorts of things. But as long as you're positive and you're looking ahead and you're looking to see what can be done to solve the situation, then it's, you know, happy, happy days for everyone.
[00:02:50.410] - Taylor
Exactly. Yeah.
[00:02:52.120] - Gordon
So before we get into our topics, let's see, what have I been doing this week? Last week we had some announcements from Apple. We didn't mention that on Friday just because we had lots of other things to talk about. But Apple had an announcement and. Yeah. What did you think of the announcement?
[00:03:10.990]
It was interesting. I mean, I prefer that the MacBook, I found that since switching from the iMac to the MacBook, it's been a lot, a lot better for me because I can like move around the house with it. I can take it with me when I go see my girlfriend, things like that. And it's a lot easier to be able to continue doing what I like to do, but not be fixed at a desk.
[00:03:35.770] - Gordon
So for those who didn't see it, they announced some new iMacs, which are very thin. They look like sort of the screen, looks like it's quite a large iPad, doesn't it? With the normal chin, as they call it, at the bottom, like a metal plate at the bottom. It's got a new bracket and a new stand and it comes in seven different colours, which is interesting. And it's using the new M1 silicon, which is great. And they've taken the twenty one and a half inch sized screen iMac and they've made it into a 24 inch sized iMac. So they brought the lowest spec to a larger size and made it more powerful than currently most of the twenty seven inches, which they haven't changed yet. But a lot of people are saying that they expect the bigger ones to be even bigger. So sort of maybe 30 inches and maybe with the next generation of the chip. But personally speaking, I don't think we're going to see those until maybe next year. Well, maybe, you know, maybe possibly September, October this year, but probably next year is my is my thinking. And and then there's the AirTags as well.
[00:04:55.180] - Taylor
Yeah, they're good.
[00:04:56.800] - Gordon
So those of you who have tiles or you know what a tile is, it's a sort of a little tracker that you can put on your keys. So if you ever lose your keys, you can you can find them easily. And Apple have now brought out their own system, which allows you to to track devices all over the world, really?
[00:05:15.350] - Taylor
Yeah. I mean they're opening it up to not only AirTags and phones they're allowing people to be able to integrate with their API, to be able to add your own devices or your own products. If you're if you create products to the kind of "Find My", which is then kind of tracking system.
[00:05:32.830] - Gordon
Which is great. So do you want to start this week or shall I?
[00:05:37.240] - Taylor
You can start this week.
[00:05:38.260] - Gordon
OK, so what I have been doing over the last couple of weeks now, in fact has been a lot longer than that is, I am involved in a local amateur dramatic club called The Sanderstead Dramatic Club, and we put on two shows a year. So we do pantomime, which is in January, and we do a play which is in sort of May time. And for the last year, because of the pandemic, none of those have been going ahead. But I've done about, hard to say now, probably about 15 ish, possibly more than that, actually thinking about it, pantomimes with this company and they're great fun. They're really good fun. It's an amateur production, but it's what I do for fun. So as a magician and entertainer, you know, it's quite strange that I would do something that's performing as my downtime, if you like. But I just really enjoy working with other people, in fact, because when you do, when I do magic, I'm normally working on my own. So it's nice to be part of a team or a cast and, you know, build something that is, you know, really good with a team of people who are very good at what they do. And last year, or rather the year before, I offered my services to direct pantomime, which I've never done before. I've directed plays before, which have all been very successful. In fact, the last play I directed brought in the most amount of money for a play that the company had seen. So that's that's really good news. But it's my first time directing a pantomime. Now, pantomime has a lot more people involved than a play does.
[00:07:39.390] - Taylor
Scene changers.
[00:07:40.620] - Gordon
Yeah, because you've got seen changes mainly and you've got people who paint the scenery. You've got people who do the costumes and you've got the music, which again you don't have in the play.
[00:07:53.185] - Taylor
Lighting
[00:07:53.970] - Gordon
There is lighting in plays. But there's a lot more lighting in pantomime and then you've got sound and sound effects and everything that goes along with that.
[00:08:02.400] - Taylor
Props.
[00:08:03.240] - Gordon
Props indeed. Yeah, yeah. There's props, more props involved in in pantomime. However, I didn't just offer to direct it, I offered to write it as well. I mean, that's a big undertaking. So, you know, everything is resting on my shoulders really because if it doesn't turn out well, well it's 100 percent my fault because I would have written it, I would have directed it. And it's all my ideas. So it's quite a lot to make sure I get right. And so even though this isn't sort of work related, it is creative. And it's a way for me to build my creative skills and move them into something that maybe I don't do very often. Writing copy for my own websites is a creative writing, but writing pantomime, well, that's a completely different type of writing. It's... What I found while I've been writing is I've been trying to visualise how I wanted to be seen on stage and write it in that way, and that's that's something that is similar to how I create my shows for my magic. I try and see it and visualise it while I'm building and creating it. And quite often I get it right. But until I actually see it and work with it, with an actual cast, it's going to be impossible to know if it's going to work. With a magic effect or magic act, I can run it myself and I can video it and I can watch it and I can see how it plays out and see if I like it and make tweaks and changes. But when I'm doing it for lots of different characters and people, I can't, you know, I don't even know who they are yet because it hasn't been cast. That's a lot more difficult. So this is going to take up quite a lot of my time. It's already taken up a lot of my time. It was supposed to be written for last year, for this January, just gone. But we didn't do that because of the pandemic. So now it's sort of all gears, everything into gear and we're speeding towards what is going to come really quickly. I mean, we already nearly in May. Yeah, May is next, tomorrow. And we need to have sort of meetings with people that matter before we actually launch it. We're going to have a launch party. We then need to have casting. And this is normally done in the summer. And if we get everything right, then we're going to have a few changes this year. We're going to have some of the scenery painted during the summer, which is very rare. We don't normally do that. We're never sort of locked in early enough to be able to know what all the scenes are going to be. But my aim is to make sure that we are ready for that, because then it gives the people, the talented painters that paint all our scenery. It gives them more time to get it done. And it allows me to create maybe bigger and better scenery and scenes that we can have. Normally, it's done sort of like a week or two weeks before we actually go live with the with the pantomime. And that's not a lot of time, to get all the scenery done and it's a bit of a rush. And, you know, there's always there's always at the end of it, you're thinking, oh, if only we had time to do that, but we've just run out of time. We can't do it anymore. So now we've got to find another way of doing it. And so hopefully that will give us a bigger and better pantomime over what we've had in the past. And I think we need that this year or next year, I should say, January, because, you know, everyone missed out last year and I think everyone's wanting to do it. And I forgot to even mention the dancers really important. We have dancers. We've got, we have kids in the show. Again, that's something plays don't have and choreography and singing. Again, so much, so much to think about. But, um, I'm getting close. I'm very nearly there, which is just as well, because my my deadline for myself was sort of the first week of May. So I've got another week just to tighten everything and tweak it just to make sure we are where we need to be. And hopefully I won't need any more time than that because then we go into the production side of it, which is a whole whole nother ball game. So that's what I've been doing not only over the last week or two, but over the last year really. It's been percolating in my head, the plot and the bits I want to put into it. So Taylor, tell us what you want to talk about this week.
[00:13:08.850] - Taylor
So this week I want to talk about using multiple monitors or kind of using extra screens. So I have different ways I use extra screens, extra screens. I, if I'm out about I have my laptop and I have my iPad and I can connect on my iPad or my tablet to my laptop and then use it as a second display. I also have my thirty four inch ultrawide which I connect to my laptop and it is absolutely brilliant, gives me lots of space, and I can put multiple different windows across one screen. I have an extra screen to be able to do other bits and pieces and then I also have a TV, which is, comes in useful if I want to watch something, but I don't want to take up space on my laptop. And what it allows me to do is watch, you know, someone if they're live streaming or YouTube videos or Netflix, something like that, where I can put it on in the background but still focus on what I'm doing, and it's kind of like off to the side whereas my monitor is kind of straight ahead.
[00:14:17.790] - Gordon
And I guess you could put something on there from YouTube going through Apple TV, if you wanted to to learn something but still have the full screen to work on.
[00:14:26.960] - Taylor
Yes. It's got a lot of uses having multiple different screens and I would highly recommend if you kind of, you know, you would sit at a desk for at least a bit of time. It's really, really useful because there's so much you can do and it opens up your possibilities a lot more, especially if you can touch type as well. So one thing that I really enjoy doing is having something, if I'm typing on one screen and having what I'm typing or copying on another, and it means I can easily look at what I'm typing without having to keep switching screens or switching applications. And it just works really, really well. And I can kind of have multiple resources open at one time without having to keep flicking back and forth.
[00:15:11.560] - Gordon
So we have mentioned multiple screens in the past. And you actually, when you got your big ultra wide screen, you mentioned it here, but now you've had time to use it for a while and you've managed to put it onto this new standing sitting desk. Maybe you could give us an update as to how, it's actually better or not as good for you against your smaller screen that you had previously.
[00:15:37.360] - Taylor
Yeah, I think I, I would very much struggle going back to a smaller screen, in terms of a laptop, I'm still very used to it. So if I've only got my laptop then that's actually fine in terms of size. But I think that going back to something smaller than what I've got, or at least kind of a similar width would be very difficult purely because I've got so used to being able to have multiple windows open at once. And if I can see my messages, I can see my discord channel, I can see my Amazon music, I can see my browser. If I've got kind of Photoshop open I can have that and the browser open at the same time.
[00:16:17.320] - Gordon
So do you want to give us a sort of a typical way that you manage that large screen? Because obviously you've got your laptop screen as well.
[00:16:25.480] - Taylor
Yes. So what I do is I will put, I normally have just, I have multiple browser windows open which have multiple tabs in, because I can then have one on my laptop and then one on my monitor across multiple spaces or kind of workspaces and I'll normally have Amazon music in the top left, I kind of split my monitor into three sections it will probably be kind of two small side channels and then one big
[00:16:56.140] - Gordon
So maybe a quarter on each side and then half in the middle.
[00:16:59.170] - Taylor
Yeah, about that. So then what I can do is I put Amazon music in the top left. The bottom left, I have my mail - it's called 'perspective' it basically gives me a quick overview of any new emails that have come in without me having to have the full window open, which is really, really useful because I can easily see when new emails come in or if there's any important ones, I then have my mail bang in the middle and then I have I have discord and messages which are kind of like communication channels I use. And that's kind of how I have one of the workspace set up. On another one, I have all of my accounting and management, business management. So I have I use a Zoho Suite, so I have Zoho books, which is my accounting; Zoho CRM; Zoho projects; and then I also have my maintenance plan dashboard, which I can manage all my websites that I kind of manage and I have that again in a similar way with the two small windows on each side and then the big dashboard in the middle. And that's really, really useful for getting a really nice big overview of what there is to be done, what invoices need going out, quickly creating invoices and then also being able to kind of manage leads and contacts and things like that. And then I have the last one would be probably just my browser when I'm actually building or designing sites. And that normally is normally just a mess. And it kind of, I have like finder windows all over the place purely because it's a very much creative thing where I want to be able to quickly pull in different windows, and so it kind of just grows from, and I don't kind of restrict myself to where they're positioned because I sometimes want three kind of browser windows open at one time. But then once I'm done with that, I'll close them, and then I've only got one, for example. So yeah, it works really, really well and I highly recommend it if you do any sort of work on your computer.
[00:18:58.360] - Gordon
Yeah, well I mean, I have a second screen as well, which I got from you. And we've spoken about this and yeah, it's really useful to be able to just drag windows over to another screen so that you can, I have one screen in front of me all the time and one on the left of me, so the one in front of me is my main screen, but I use the other one for reference or if I want to have stuff there that's going to be having notifications and I can just refer to it, that sort of thing. But it's great just as a sort of a dumping ground for things that I don't need all the time, but I definitely need, and I can just look at very quickly.
[00:19:36.780] - Taylor
Yeah. I mean, you were not against it, but you never saw the.
[00:19:40.260] - Gordon
Well, yes. So I had slightly different way into having two screens because I've always had two screens but, they've both been two computers, so they're not connected in any way, they were just completely separate computers and I had one in front of me, one on the left. Which is fine because you're adding processing power to to what you are what you had.
[00:20:06.120] - Taylor
There wasn't much processing power on the one computer that you had.
[00:20:09.050] - Gordon
No, that's true. The one on the left was quite an old, much older machine. And the reason I had it originally is because I couldn't upgrade the operating system due to some of the software that I was using. And so it had sort of my databases and things on it that I needed access to. And that's the software I couldn't upgrade. And eventually I found a way to move the databases over to the new operating system and the machine on my left died, you know, it just basically gave up the ghost and I couldn't use it and I sort of missed it. And I didn't want to buy a brand new computer because, you know, I don't think the extra CPU is actually necessary because normally stuff is just sitting there doing nothing.
[00:20:55.530] - Taylor
It's also more annoying because I had this issue where I had a MacBook and I had an iMac at the same time. And it was one of the most frustrating things because being able to keep everything in sync is just a big headache.
[00:21:11.100] - Gordon
That's a good point.
[00:21:12.900] - Taylor
Unless you store everything in the cloud, keeping everything in sync is very, very difficult. If you do any work on your laptop and you then save just to documents because it's quicker or you don't have internet. You then can't access it from your iMac because they're not in sync unless you upload it to the cloud. But you have to keep remembering to do that.
[00:21:30.780] - Gordon
Yeah, that's very true. And that was one of the problems I had as well, I couldn't sort of share files easily between the two machines. So, you know, when this machine died, I eventually, took a while, but I eventually replaced it with a second screen plugged into my main iMac.
[00:21:47.280] - Taylor
And I was selling it wasn't I.
[00:21:48.660] - Gordon
You were. Yeah. You sold it to me. Yeah. Um, at the same price that you bought it, I'm not sure I got a good deal there.
[00:21:54.690] - Taylor
Not true. Not true.
[00:21:58.500] - Gordon
So that's pretty much all I want to say about anything really. I think that's covered everything from me. What about you?
[00:22:05.670] - Taylor
Yeah, I think that's everything as well.
[00:22:07.140] - Gordon
Great. Well, thank you for joining us once again. As always, we can be found on YouTube and on Facebook. The links for those are on the screen, please, like share and subscribe.
[00:22:18.870] - Taylor
You can also go to our website thisweekwith.co.uk and you can find all of our past episodes on there, about a year's worth now, which is very cool, I think.
[00:22:29.410] - Gordon
Yeah, that's very good. So until next week, on Friday at 1:00 pm, my name's Gordon, I'm from Drayson Design
[00:22:37.050] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:22:39.130] - Gordon
See you next week.
[00:22:40.050] - Taylor
Bye.
[00:22:40.410] - Gordon
Goodbye.
