[00:00:09.180] - Gordon
Hello.
[00:00:09.550] - Taylor
Hello.
[00:00:09.890] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.
[00:00:11.940] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:00:14.090] - 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. Oh, my goodness, it's been cold.
[00:00:25.660] - Taylor
It has.
[00:00:26.310] - Gordon
It's been so cold over this last week. It's, when you have to put time into your schedule so that you've got time to make sure your car is defrosted before you go out, then you know it's cold. I've had to do that a couple of times this week. It doesn't seem to be getting much warmer. Hopefully, we're coming to the end of the cold spell and we're going to start moving into spring and it's going to get a little bit warmer because I'm not a big fan of the cold.
[00:00:57.540] - Taylor
No?
[00:00:58.180] - Gordon
No, not really. Anyway, it's also been a very busy week. I can just quickly go through what I've done this week. I've been doing the DVDs and the videos for the pantomime. So we had all of the footage captured, two shows worth with two cameras, last week during the run. We came to the end of the run on Saturday. They all went really, really well, and I'm very pleased with how it went. And now, this week was my editing time. So I've been editing them all up. Found everything went quite smoothly. I had a couple of problems. One of the cameras didn't capture correctly. There was interference in the video signal, which is a real shame because it's like a one-off thing that I can't go back and redo. But because I wasn't the one in charge of the cameras, I didn't see this problem. And the person who was in charge of the cameras didn't know about the problem. So for one of the shows, one of the cameras had some dodgy footage, which it just has bits that come all over the screen, and it's not nice. But I had to use it because we had two groups of children, so I had to make sure we used both. So that was something I had to overcome. And then just as I thought I was finished video-editing that video, I found out that the corruption had given me a load of black screens as one frame, and it wouldn't export because of them. So I had to go through and delete all those single black frames. And if you think there's 25 frames in a second, and I had about 600 of them to get rid of before the video would export, and I had to find them first as well. So, oh my goodness, you think you're ready to go and then find you got another four, four and a half hours work to do, which you really didn't need. But, it's all done. Tomorrow night is our panto party and I get to distribute all of the DVDs to people and all the online videos have already been sent out to people. So they got it early; they got a higher quality; and they paid less. So it's my way of trying to get people to use that system because it makes my life easier. Plus everyone gets higher quality. It's much higher quality online than it is as a DVD. So yes, that's been my week. What's your week been like?
[00:03:30.110] - Taylor
My week's been very busy working through most of my projects really; working on a couple of personal projects, which has been fun. And I've been trying to work towards building in processes and automations and things to help everything run smoother.
[00:03:52.450] - Gordon
Very good. Excellent. You might notice I'm in my children's magic outfit. It's because I got a show to go to shortly, so I'm all ready for that. Right. Do you want to go first or shall I?
[00:04:04.830] - Taylor
I'll go first.
[00:04:05.560] - Gordon
Go on then. Off you go.
[00:04:06.510] - Taylor
So this week I spent a bit of time thinking about my goals for the year. And I was talking to my friend Jonathan, who mentioned an idea that I really liked the thought of, and it's having slots for your life. So what it means is, if you have, for example, 10 slots, that is the only capacity that you have for your entire life. You can't do more than that because you can't take it on, you can't complete the stuff, you can't do it to a good level. And what it means you have to do is you have to prioritise.
[00:04:48.820] - Gordon
So these are imaginary slots. They're like, if you think of one of those IKEA box shelving things with the boxes. So you've got all these separate slots that are all empty to begin with, and you're going to put things from your life into each box.
[00:05:06.260] - Taylor
Yes.
[00:05:06.810] - Gordon
Okay, so we're not talking physical things. We're talking concepts or projects.
[00:05:12.680] - Taylor
So the reason for doing this is I think a lot of the time we don't stick at something for long enough. We see something, we go, "Oh, I'll do this." You do it for a couple of weeks, a couple of months? And then you move on to the next thing.
[00:05:27.400] - Gordon
Next shiny thing.
[00:05:28.960] - Taylor
And what that causes is lots of gaps in your systems, lots of unfinished work, and it also stops you from taking on more than you can handle. So what I mean by this is if you've got, for example, two money making slots, you have two ways that you can make money. Rather than having lots and lots of different ways you can make money, you have two, but you focus on them, you work hard at them, and you make them really, really work; rather than having lots of little bits here and there that amount to small bits. You go all in on two, and that's what you stick to. Should anything else come up, you either have to go, "No, sorry, I don't have any space," or you rethink your priorities and you go, "Actually, this is a better project to now go down," but it means sacrificing one of the other projects in your slots.
[00:06:29.120] - Gordon
So you're taking something out of a slot that you don't want to work on anymore, or you don't want to be part of your life, and you're putting a new one into that slot.
[00:06:37.240] - Taylor
Exactly. And there's different areas that I have split this up to. So I've split it up into business, so that would be my agency, The Creative Tinker and Snippet Club. I've split it into health, so that is the gym/all of my racket sports that I really enjoy.
[00:06:56.140] - Gordon
So that's fitness.
[00:06:57.070] - Taylor
Keeps me active. And what was the other one? Meditation was my other one for health. It's something I think is quite important and it helps you keep yourself centred and thinking about what you're doing in your life. Because it's very easy to get lost and caught up in everyday life, essentially. And the last one is personal. And for me, I wanted to learn a language. So I'm learning British sign language. That's something I'm working towards. And then also my personal projects that I'm working on. And it means I can still work on those things without having to give that up because it's something I enjoy. But there's a caveat to that one, which is I can't start any new projects.
[00:07:43.720] - Gordon
Until?
[00:07:44.820] - Taylor
Until I've finished all of the projects that I have outstanding. And that way it stops me from trying a new idea, building new things when I haven't finished a lot of the stuff that I've already started. So I have made a list of the projects that I want to finish. And then, yeah, if it's not one of those projects that I want to work on, I can't do it. I have to wait until all of them are finished before I can then start on a new one.
[00:08:10.220] - Gordon
Very good. And this is the right time to do this sort of thing, because we're at the beginning of the year. New Year's resolutions are not something I've ever done. I've put things I would like to do during the year, but they're not really goals. They're more "this is what I would like to do." I'm not the sort of person who can set a goal or an aim like that with such a long period of time. I work much better to short deadlines. So if something has to be done by next Saturday, it will get done. That works for me. So long term goals I always struggle with. But yeah, it sounds like this is going to be good. And it would be interesting, actually, if you keep track of your boxes and when they change and why they change, just so you can look back and see your year in review and see how you did.
[00:09:07.560] - Taylor
Yeah, exactly. And I'm using Notion to track all this. You can set milestones to goals, and that then gives you a way to have to track your progress. So for me, for things like sign language and the meditation, I have a value assigned to what I want to do. So for example, meditation is 10 minutes a day. For example, reading was 10 pages a day, and sign language is they have chapters that I want to complete. And what you do is you basically add in... I've done it basically on a month basis for the meditation and reading, and I've said I want to either do 10 minutes or 10 pages and have a minimum of 90% completion within the month. And that is what I would count as success for that milestone for that month. If I have more than 90% of the month completed, I consider that a good measurement because it's just very, very unlikely to get 100%. And if I got 95%, 99%, but I didn't get full 100%, it looks like, "Okay, I've failed." But there could be certain reasons why. I could be travelling or just didn't have, things happen, because life does get in the way sometimes. So by giving myself this 90% minimum, it means that I don't look at it as, "Oh, I failed." I look at it as "I've got pretty close." And yeah, I think that's a good way to measure because it is very easy, especially with a tick box, to go, "I failed that" or "I completed that," even if you are at 99%, for example.
[00:10:57.130] - Gordon
Very good. Okay, well, if that the sort of thing that might work for you, then have a look at working out how many boxes you have capacity for in your life and start filling them up. Yeah.
[00:11:09.400] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:11:09.930] - Gordon
Very good. So I want to talk about the Raspberry Pi. Now, this is a little computer. The reason for it, I think I've mentioned it before in the past, but the reason that it was created is to make it easy for hobbyists who want to create projects or use these computers within projects and make it affordable, basically. So the idea is that it's a tiny little board, this sort of size, and it has a whole computer on it, but it's a bare board, and you can add things onto it. You can add a camera; you can add a keyboard; you can add a monitor; you can add sensors; you can add infrared cameras. You can basically add on anything you want. And there's a huge collection of accessories that you can get for it. A lot of them are made by third parties. And the purpose for it is to make it nice and easy and cheap to add a computer that needs to think about something, into a project. So for example, one of the things that I always wanted to do is, I grew up in a time when the ZX81, the ZX Spectrum, the BBC Micro, all these computers were starting to come out and they were becoming available, and there was lots of software and games and all sorts of 8bit goodness that you just don't find anymore. And I loved some of these old games that I used to play. There's a game called Repton, there's Chucky Egg, there's Elite on the Electron, and the BBC Micro, and then there's all sorts of... Arcanoid, the bat and ball game, and all of these things that I used to love playing. And I miss them because it was a big part of my life. And one of the things that the Raspberry Pi is really good at is emulating all these old machines. It's got enough power within it to allow you to to do that. So I looked around to see what was available, and there's a whole open source project by a guy called Rick Dangerous, which is actually a name of a game. He's taken it from one of his favourite games, and he's basically created this whole system where he's got different software that emulates different services and products and a lot of ROMs that are available in the public domain now, and he's put them all together onto this system, and he runs it all using a Raspberry Pi. Now, Raspberry Pi 4 is what we were up to. And at the time that I was looking into this, I purchased a Raspberry Pi 400. Now, this is a computer within a keyboard. So you've got the keyboard, you can plug a mouse into it, you plug the screen into it, and you've got the whole computer and everything is inside the keyboard. And for me, this was easier than getting a little box and trying to put the Raspberry Pi into it and then figure out what I needed, peripheral-wise. It just came as one unit, and that for me was easy. So that's what I did. And I've just upgraded my system. I've added a two terabyte SSD drive to it, which, funnily enough, cost more for the SSD drive than it did for the whole computer.
[00:14:58.130] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:14:58.440] - Gordon
Isn't that silly? But I've got a bit of room for expansion now. And there's still a load of updates. Because it's open source and because it's a part of this project that this guy, Rick Dangerous, has started with lots of other people now inputting their knowledge and their wants and ideas into. It's had 368 updates since it originally came out. And I'm working my way through those updates at the moment. But it is so cool. I've got it plugged into my TV and it's just so good. I've got a Bluetooth... I've got two Bluetooth...
[00:15:45.030] - Taylor
Controllers.
[00:15:45.290] - Gordon
Controllers, thank you, which are completely wireless. So I can just sit there playing the games whenever I've got a few minutes down time or I want to have just a break from something. I can just sit there and I can play one of the old games that I used to play. And it's so, so much fun. The other thing that I'm using to play games and get a bit of downtime is the MetaQuest 2. The MetaQuest 3 has recently come out, but the MetaQuest 2 is something that I have friends around the country and around the world. I just put a message on WhatsApp and say, "Anyone around for a game of walkabout golf or Demio?" Or one of the other games that's on there. And I can just stick it on, it's VR, I can have a quick game with someone, or if I've got a bit time, a bit of a longer game, and catch up with them. And it's a social thing to do, take it off and then carry on with some work.
[00:16:42.350] - Taylor
I think the Raspberry Pi really became quite popular because it was a cheap way to, like you say, integrate a computer into projects, but things that are more DIY. So the biggest, I think, example people use are magic mirrors. And so what this is, it's a monitor behind a mirror, and you essentially just run the Raspberry PI, which is just a small computer that connects to the internet, and just displays like a web page, essentially. If you were to use a computer, a normal computer, one it's going to be quite expensive.
[00:17:24.560] - Gordon
It's going to be huge.
[00:17:25.060] - Taylor
Yeah... And it's also the form factor is very, very small. It can be tucked away inside of a project. And it's also fully run by itself. You don't need to have peripherals attached.
[00:17:35.650] - Gordon
It just needs power.
[00:17:37.240] - Taylor
It just sits there and just runs in the background.
[00:17:39.920] - Gordon
And can be headless as well. So you don't actually need to have a monitor. You don't actually need to add a keyboard or a mouse. You can just - once it's all set up and it's ready to go, it will just boot into whatever you've created it to do, and it will do it. So a magic mirror, for example, is a perfect solution for that. Another thing it would be for would be one of these photo frames that you put on your on your wall or on your mantelpiece and have it do a slideshow of your favourite photos. And because it's WiFi enabled, you can add photos to it from an external source. You can do it from an actual computer. I mean, the Raspberry Pi is a computer, but you would send it over wirelessly via WiFi to it, without having to unplug anything; or you just use an SD card and do it that way. But the Raspberry Pi is just adding a brain to something, to a project or something that needs a bit of power as in computing power, to do its thing. And the reason I mentioned it today is because the Raspberry Pi 4 was unavailable for quite a long time. There were so many people who wanted it, and then we had a big shortage of chips and everything became very expensive and out of stock everywhere. But the Raspberry Pi is now back in stock. And in fact, even more important is the... Sorry, the Raspberry 4 is back in stock. The Raspberry 5 has just been released. Now, I know nothing about this. The only thing I use it for currently is the Retro Pi, the retro games. But I would like to experiment a bit more with it and see what else it can do because there's so much potential there. You could have it sitting next to a monitor and just have it show all of your... A dashboard, for example, of all your company's stats and do it that way. Have something without having a big server room that has to send everything out and wires going everywhere. You can just put a Raspberry Pi in and just have it access the information you want by having a web page, display it on a big screen, and so that all of yourself and your employees can see it and see the key stats at a moment's notice. And that works really well for motivating people. So many projects. Have a look for it. It's a Raspberry Pi, P-I. So, yeah, go looking into that. If you need just a very simple computer that's quite powerful and will do a simple job, it will do it really well. And there's so many people out there that use it, that if you need help, there's forums, there's Discords, there's YouTube videos. There's so much help available. Anything you want to add to that?
[00:20:40.960] - Taylor
I don't think so.
[00:20:42.000] - Gordon
Okay, that's it from me today. So thank you so much for joining us. Just a quick heads up. Middle to end of February, I'm away. I'm going to Blackpool for the Magic Convention, then I'm off to Vegas to an exhibition there to help out with a friend of mine. So we may have a few episodes at the end of February that we'll either be doing on Zoom, or we won't be doing at all. So just a heads up so you don't get to February and go, "oh, where's my fix? It's not, This Week With isn't up." That's it from me. As always, you can like, share and subscribe. We're on Facebook and on YouTube.
[00:21:26.270] - Taylor
You can also go to our website thisweekwith.co.uk to find all of our past episodes.
[00:21:31.270] - Gordon
We'll be with you, all being well, next week at 1pm on Friday, where we go live. Until then, my name is Gordon, and I'm from Drayson Design.
[00:21:41.250] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:21:43.660] - Gordon
Goodbye.
[00:21:43.960] - Taylor
Bye.
